Muhammad Firman, a PhD student in marine environmental science at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, researches the link between marine animal physiology and the chemical properties of dissolved organic matter (DOM). With a background in Oceanography from Institut Teknologi Bandung and an MPhil from HKUST, his work employs metatranscriptomics and high-resolution mass spectrometry to explore DOM chemodiversity and its role in marine biogeochemical processes.