Dan Zhu was born in Shenyang, Liaoning Province, China. She majored in bioscience in the college of life science, Nankai University (2009-2013) and recieved the doctor degree of science in the department of Biomedical engineering, College of Engineering, Peking University (2013-2020). During her doctoral studies, she originally established and optimized an accurate mutagenesis method allowing generating multiple mutated sites in several genes in a single batch and applied for patents. Then she focused on the development of CRISPR/Cas12a gene editing tools. She identified novel Cas12a candidates and utilized in vivo high-throughput screening and protein engineering methods to enhance editing activity and expand targeting range of Cas12a system.