Kukui is the first professor that really emphasizes field work and actually getting hit by pokemon. It's cool that he seems to have a different angle to his research. What's more interesting is his field of study.
Moves.

>Professor Oak of the Kanto region, who studies the relationships between Pokémon and humans.
This was a big theme of Gen 1, with the bad guys being bad because they mistreat their pokemon. It also ties to the conflict between nature and technology.
>Professor Elm of the Johto region, who studies Pokémon breeding patterns.
This was the first generation to feature breeding. Pretty important.
>Professor Birch of the Hoenn region, who studies Pokémon habitats. This is the first region to really try to make it seem like pokemon live in many different places. Also ties in heavily to the theme of land vs. sea vs. sky.
>Professor Rowan of the Sinnoh region, who studies Pokémon evolution.
Sinnoh featured huge amounts of evos to previous pokemon.
>Professor Juniper of the Unova region, who studies the origins of Pokémon.
This was a reboot so studying origins makes sense. Also all of the lore about original dragons and such.
>Professor Sycamore of the Kalos region, who studies Mega Evolution and change.
Fucking mega evolutions.
>Professor Kukui of the Alola region, who studies Pokémon attacks.
Why moves? What could possibly change?

I'm calling it right now that double type moves like flying press, and moves with far more varied effects will be far more common.

Not only that, but Marshadow will be a fire/dark type, with a fire/dark signature. This move would be 4x effective on both box legends. The story likely will revolve around Marshadow and the evil team attacking the box legend.
Given that Mars is called the fire star in Japan it makes sense that they saved fire for him in the trio now.