Yonghui Ma was born in Wubu, Shaanxi Province, China. He graduated with a BSc from Peking University in July 2006, majoring in space physics. He received his doctorate (space physics) at the National Space Science Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2012. He then worked at Macau University of Science and Technology as a Postdoctoral Fellow for three years. In 2016, he became an assistant professor at the Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen.