David WONG Yuk-Kwan, MPhil student in Integrative Systems and Design (ISD), has been selected as a laureate of the Anita Conti Sustainable Innovation Fellowship 2026 in recognition of his outstanding research potential and commitment to sustainability and environmental innovation. As one of the only two recipients of the fellowship this year, David’s selection underscores his academic and professional excellence.

Supervised by Prof. Sai-Kit YEUNG (Professor in the Division of Integrative Systems and Design), David’s research focuses on bridging the gap between vision-language models (VLMs) and marine science. By developing ORCA and MarineEval, he addresses the limitations of general AI in domain-specific marine tasks. MarineEval establishes a rigorous 2,000-image benchmark evaluating VLMs across 20 specialized capabilities like species identification and ecological reasoning. Complementing this, ORCA provides a training foundation with over 14,000 underwater images featuring fine-grained, expert-annotated captions and bounding boxes. His work establishes evaluation frameworks and dataset foundations to advance AI expertise in complex underwater environments.

As a fellowship laureate , David will spend three months conducting sustainability-related research at a laboratory in France, fostering international collaboration and advancing research that addresses pressing environmental challenges.

Jointly established by The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and the Consulate General of France in Hong Kong and Macau, the Anita Conti Sustainable Innovation Fellowship honors the legacy of renowned ocean scientist and conservation pioneer Anita Conti. The fellowship supports outstanding researchers who demonstrate excellence and promise in sustainability and environmental innovation. Through this prestigious fellowship, recipients have the opportunity to collaborate with leading researchers, expand their international networks, and contribute to the development of innovative solutions for a more sustainable future.

Congratulations to David on this well-deserved recognition! We look forward to his continued contributions to sustainability research, particularly in the areas of marine AI and coral conservation.