With a lot of useful feedback from my students and other alumni, I am currently planning ahead to update my current courses of biochemistry and biomedical science education for Secondary School students in Hong Kong.

The Science Academy for Young Talent (SAYT) courses will remain more or less the same; where ‘CUSA3003 Biological Science Student Knowledge Enhancement Course‘ and ‘ CUSA1013 Great Discovery in Biomedical Discoveries‘ are expected to be offered again in the summer of 2020. There could be some updates in CUSA1013, so as to provide the target students between S1 and S3 with some solid background of life science in general.

Some courses offered by the Program for the Gifted and Talented will be revised, for example, ‘Immunity and Infections‘ will be extended from a two-day course to a three-day course, covering additional topics related to fungi and parasite infections. ‘Biochemistry and Diseases‘, for instance, will be divided into three units (instead of two)  to cover additional topics related to biomarkers, molecular diagnostics, and medical nutrition. Furthermore, a new course titled ‘Immunity and Diseases’ will be proposed to cover topics, such as basic immunology, allergy and autoimmunity, transplantation immunology, cancer immunology, and other representative immunological diseases will be covered. All the additional topics mentioned above are enthusiastically requested by the alumni. ‘Biochemistry and Diseases’ is expected to be offered in 2019/20; yet, the offerings of ‘Immunity and Infections’ and ‘Immunity and Diseases’ are not yet confirmed. I will try to fix the schedule if I have some time during 2020/21.

Finally, as many of my students and alumni are interested in doing experiments, I wish I can also make the effort for them to apply scientific method for their experimental projects on their own; in my humble opinion, I tend to design experiments for my students and alumni to carry out in their own schools; whereas, I have a lower priority to offer them practical courses. Herein, let me cite a quote ‘give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime‘.