Qingyun Ma is Professor Emeritus of Architecture at the University of Southern California, where he served as Dean of the USC School of Architecture from January 2007 to June 2017. During his two five-year terms, he advanced the school's emphasis on cultural diversity, social mobility, and connections across the Pacific Rim. Ma earned his Bachelor of Architecture degree from Tsinghua University in 1988 and his Master of Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Fine Arts in 1991, where he was the first Chinese citizen to study architecture since Sicheng Liang and received the Frank Miles Day Memorial Prize along with a prize for study and travel in Europe.

Before joining USC, Ma practiced architecture in New York City with Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates and founded MADA s.p.a.m. in 1996, establishing it in Shanghai in 1999 as a firm integrating strategy, planning, architecture, and media. Key projects by MADA s.p.a.m. include the Qingpu Community Island in Shanghai, Centennial TV and Radio Center in Xi'an, Tianyi City Plaza in Ningbo, Longyang Residential complex in Shanghai, and the Silk Tower in Xi'an, then the tallest building in Northwest China. His designs have been exhibited worldwide, including at the Venice Biennale, Centre Pompidou in Paris, and Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum in New York. Ma coordinated Rem Koolhaas' Harvard Project on Cities, resulting in the 1993 publication The Great Leap Forward, and served as visiting professor and critic at Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, ETH Zurich, Berlage Institute, and others. He held prominent roles such as chief curator of the 2007 Shenzhen-Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism and Architecture, planning expert for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, member of the Olympic Stadium jury, and architecture design consultant for Los Angeles urban development and the Shanghai Disney project. Awards include Design Vanguard from Architectural Record, Emerging Design Talents from Phaidon, and New Trends of Architecture from the Euro-Asia Foundation; in 2010, he was named one of the world’s most influential designers.