Dr. Ziyuan Luo Awarded RGC Junior Research Fellow Scheme 2026/27 for Research in Embodied AI Safety

The Department is delighted to announce that Dr. Ziyuan Luo, a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, has been awarded the prestigious RGC Junior Research Fellow Scheme (JRFS) for 2026/27 to advance his pioneering research in multimodal safety for embodied AI systems.

Dr. Luo's award-winning project, “Safety-Aware Vision-Language-Action Models: Integrating Multi-Modal Risk Assessment for Robust Embodied AI Systems”, builds upon his doctoral work in multimodal content security to address safety challenges in embodied AI. By developing novel frameworks that detect and resolve conflicts across vision, language, and action modalities, his research aims to create safer, more trustworthy embodied AI systems for high-stakes applications such as healthcare robotics and autonomous driving.

Upon receiving the fellowship, Dr. Luo expressed his gratitude, “I am truly honoured to receive this JRFS Award. I am deeply grateful to my supervisor, Professor Renjie Wan, for his invaluable mentorship and continuous support throughout my doctoral studies. This fellowship will allow me to pursue further my passion for building safer, more reliable, and socially responsible AI systems.”

The RGC Junior Research Fellow Scheme is a highly competitive two-year programme that recognises only 60 early-career researchers annually across all UGC-funded universities in Hong Kong. It is designed to foster research excellence and nurture the next generation of academic leaders. Dr. Luo is the third scholar from the Department to receive this distinguished fellowship, underscoring the Department’s growing strength in cutting-edge AI research.