New Education Hub Strengthens Sino-Danish Collaboration

• China and Denmark celebrate 75 years of diplomatic ties through deepened cooperation at the Sino-Danish Centre (SDC) for Education and Research in Beijing’s Yanqi Lake campus.
• SDC, co-founded by UCAS and 8 Danish universities, promotes cross-border education, innovation, and green development with joint degrees, multicultural programs, and AI-driven research.
• The centre supports global talent development and sustainability, with collaborative projects in neuroscience, climate change, and clean energy under the Green Joint Work Programme.

China and Denmark are hand in hand deepening exchanges and fostering cooperation. This year is the 75th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two nations, and the Sino-Danish Centre for Education and Research an international education hall is bridging the world's top academic resources and research strengths through cross-border collaboration on the shores of Yanqi Lake in Huairou Science City, Beijing.

The center, co-established 15 years ago by the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, aka UCAS, and eight Danish universities, facilitates writing one chapter of innovative cooperation between nations in the new era through sustained and deep-going educational collaboration, said representatives from the center.

High-level cooperation

The educational mission of the center is carried out by the Sino-Danish College, or SDC. The first semester opening ceremony of 2012 attended by then Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt. The House of the Danish Industry Foundation on Yanqi Lake campus of UCAS was constructed through a donation from the Danish Industry Foundation and is an emblem of Sino-Danish friendship. The previous queen of Denmark Margrethe II laid the foundation stone for it in 2014.

A common interest committee was set up through the common interest of the Chinese and Danish sides to facilitate future development. These high-level exchanges reflect the very essence of Sino-Danish cooperation common interest consultation, co-construction and sharing laying a profound foundation and offering stable support to SDC's development, the representatives said.

The centre is full of intellectual power, drawing intellectual forces from more than 50 institutes of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, or CAS, and eight first-rate universities in Denmark. It encompasses five strategic areas: life sciences, water and the environment and social sciences.

In this regard, the SDC not only mobilizes intellectual power but also offers a special setting for worldwide talent development and intercultural collaboration. In the words of Morten Laugesen, SDC Executive Director, "SDC is a unique and valuable collaboration", particularly in a world where global issues such as climate and environmental change need collaborative solutions. He insisted that SDC has a significant role to play by educating students with diverse world perceptions to work together and learn from one another, promoting value-creating global relations.

World-class learning

Taking advantage of the CAS research and educational capacities and the eight Danish universities, SDC offers a two-supervisor mode (a Chinese and a Danish), English-teaching courses instructed by Chinese and foreign teachers, and blended classes of high-achieving Chinese and foreign students. Professor Morten Meldal of the University of Copenhagen, who won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, has supervised five Chinese students as a Danish supervisor at SDC.

SDC adopts a double degree education system that allows students to earn degrees in both UCAS and one of the eight Danish universities. It aims to nurture innovative and entrepreneurial professionals with interdisciplinary minds, innovative consciousness, international awareness of rules, and international competitiveness. SDC provides seven master's programs and five fields of doctoral research.

Chinese and Danish students have developed together in the multicultural atmosphere of SDC, a concrete manifestation of the cooperation between China and Denmark. For overseas students, the school is rather an all-round platform where they can be educated, study Chinese culture, and facilitate friendly cooperation between China and the outside world.

Tobias Harritz, a 2024 SDC master's degree recipient, explained that not having many options to study neuroscience in Denmark, he applied to the Neuroscience and Neuroimaging master's program at SDC. "Our Chinese classmates were very friendly, frequently inviting us to venture out to explore places in and around Beijing, like the Forbidden City and the Great Wall", Harritz stated.

He mentioned that the information he acquired from the master's program cannot be overemphasized. It helped him obtain his PhD role at the University of Oxford. Harritz's study in SDC is primarily centred on mild traumatic brain injury, also known as mTBI.

Xue Rong, Chinese supervisor of Harritz and a professor in the Institute of Biophysics of CAS, replied: "In the research process of one year, Tobias finished the experimental design and data collection, found differences of brain imaging between mTBI and normal mice in different modalities, and built models to reasonably describe the longitudinal change of the corresponding imaging indicators in a reasonable manner. His work was very comprehensive and excellent".

"In the future, we will introduce various treatment strategies into this project to monitor their impacts on the recovery of mTBI, thus offering references for mTBI treatment. We will also try to carry out relevant research in human patients with mTBI", Xue said. Harritz is also still researching traumatic brain injury with new MRI techniques in human beings at the University of Oxford.

For Chinese students, SDC is an international platform for their learning from advanced educational systems, scholar visits abroad and interdisciplinary seminars.

Speaking of harvests gained in SDC, Cao Mingjing, who graduated double doctoral degrees in 2020, said: "SDC provides us with valuable exchange opportunities overseas. I was studying in the iNANO research center of Aarhus University from mid-2018 to early-2019, and I was incredibly fortunate to be in the internationalized team of professor Duncan Sutherland and my teammates were from other European countries".

Cao stated that she felt the cultures of foreign countries, became familiar with European ways of thinking and researching habits and widened her vistas there.

Green development

In addition to training students from the two nations, SDC also engages in cooperation in green development. In 2023, the Chinese and Danish governments initiated the Green Joint Work Programme in order to intensify their cooperation in fields such as climate and energy, the environment and water resources, and science and technology.

Danish Minister for Science and Higher Education Christina Egelund stressed in her visit to SDC: "Where green research, climate change, the protection of the environment and global health are concerned, China is not only Denmark's, but the world's, key partner".

Following this common vision, SDC leadership also recognizes sustainability as an essential element of its academic mission. The green vision of the two countries is embedded into SDC's education courses, influences its research collaboration, and is manifested in its numerous PhD projects, Laugesen said. SDC is now very much preoccupied with the green transformation and with developing solutions to global challenges like health, food, the environment and climate, he said.

Seizing the opportunity of the national green development strategy, SDC will further strengthen mutual learning and collaboration in fields like climate change, clean energy and intelligent agriculture. This science and education bridge across the Eurasian continent not only bears the beautiful hopes of the people of the two countries, but also reflects the Chinese wisdom in building a community with a shared future for mankind.

Sino-Danish College is located in University of Chinese Academy of Sciences's Yanqi Lake campus in Beijing.