Cold Spring Harbor (CSH) Asia DNA Learning Center, jointly founded by SIP Administrative Committee and US-headquartered non-profit private research institution Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) in SIP's Dushu Lake Science & Education Innovation Zone in 2015, is winning increasing popularity among people looking to learn more about genetics.

As the country's first professional genetic science education project and Asia's largest DNA learning center, CSH Asia DNA Learning Center offers a variety of programs (nearly half at no charge) which, according to the center's director Du Cheng, have benefited about 30,000 people so far. In the latest case, Yuan Yin, a Cambridge student who served as a volunteer at the center during his summer vacation, gained the entry to a research project at CSHL.

The experiment-based courses are among the best-loved programs. There are public lessons, summer and winter camps and specially devised training sessions offering youngsters and even their parents and teachers opportunities to try their hands at various biotic experiments and discover the "secrets" of genes by themselves.

Apart from that, the center is running a teacher training program in collaboration with Suzhou Education Bureau, hoping to help Suzhou's biology teachers enhance their teaching ability.

"We are endeavoring to provide more programs for public science popularization in the next step," Du disclosed.