I am eager to participate in the Hong Kong Laureate Forum 2025 to enhance my scientific career network and acquire essential skills for my future career aspiration as a professor. The Forum's focus on connecting current and future leaders in science aligns perfectly with my aspirations. Learning from Shaw Laureates, who have made remarkable contributions in fields like Astronomy, Life Science, and Mathematical Sciences, will provide invaluable insights for my research and academic career. I am particularly excited about the opportunity to engage in discussions, scienctific sharing, and workshops that foster collaboration and innovation. Moreover, the HKLF's commitment to cross-cultural dialogue resonates with my belief in the importance of diverse perspectives in scientific inquiry. Engaging with fellow emerging scientists from multidisciplinary backgrounds will allow me to share ideas and cultivate partnerships that can address global challenges. I hope to leverage the knowledge gained from the Forum to contribute to science education in the community. Participating in HKLF 2025 would be a transformative experience, helping me grow as a scientist and educator.

Dissolved organic matter (DOM), the largest reservoir of organic material in the ocean, plays a crucial role in the global carbon cycle and the microbial loop. While existing studies have documented significant DOM release by zooplankton, the chemodiversity and bioavailability of this DOM, along with the physiological mechanisms influencing these characteristics in heterogeneous coastal water environments, remain inadequately explored. We conducted onboard zooplankton DOM release experiments in heterogeneous estuarine-coastal water systems, followed by molecular characterization of the DOM using Fourier-transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry. Additionally, we analysed zooplankton metabolic activities through meta-transcriptomics to elucidate the relationship between the chemical properties of the released DOM and the underlying physiological processes of zooplankton. Our findings reveal substantial variations in the molecular diversity of DOM released by zooplankton across heterogeneous environment, notably between estuarine and coastal communities. We found strong correlations between the chemical reactivity of the DOM and clusters of orthologous groups (COGs) genes associated with functions such as carbohydrate metabolism, nucleotide processing, energy production, and coenzyme metabolism. Importantly, the aromaticity index (AI) of the released DOM was closely linked to metabolism-related gene functions, indicating that zooplankton metabolic processes significantly influence DOM bioavailability.