Haotian Gu is an NIHR ACAF Fellow and Clinical Senior Lecturer at King’s College London, as well as an Honorary Consultant Clinical Scientist in Cardiac Imaging at St Thomas’ Hospital. He holds a first degree in Biomedical Engineering and three MSc degrees in Advanced Biomedical Engineering, Medical Ultrasound, and Health Economics. In 2017, he was awarded a PhD in Cardiovascular Science from King’s College.

Haotian began his clinical echocardiography training in 2007 and became a registered Clinical Scientist in 2017, followed by achieving Higher Specialist Scientist (Consultant Clinical Scientist) status in 2019.

His contributions to echocardiography and imaging have been recognized with numerous awards and accolades. He was nominated for the BHF Rising Star Award in 2018 and named Investigator of the Year by the British Society of Echocardiography in both 2017 and 2018. Additionally, he received the Allied Health Professional Awards from the British and Irish Society of Hypertension in 2019, 2021, and 2022. In 2022, Haotian was honored with the Excellence in Healthcare Science Award by the NHS England Chief Scientific Officer, and in 2023, he received the Innovation in Healthcare Science Award from the Advancing Healthcare Awards for his research and innovation in cardiac imaging.

More recently, Haotian has been awarded the prestigious NIHR Advanced Clinical and Practitioner Academic Fellowship (ACAF) after successfully completing the NIHR Clinical Leadership program. As part of this fellowship, he will play a pivotal role in leading a multicenter RCT focused on patients with severe heart failure who are undergoing Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy (CRT). This innovative study aims to address the impact of first-phase ejection fraction (EF1) in improving patient selection and optimizing CRT strategies in this patient population.

During his academic career, Haotian has invented a novel imaging biomarker for the detection of early systolic dysfunction and has established several national and international collaborations, including with the University of Edinburgh, University of Oxford, Leeds Teaching Hospitals, Barts Heart Centre, St George’s Hospital, Lille Catholic University in France, the University of Bergen in Norway, and Union Hospital in China. His main research focus is on the non-invasive measurement of myocardial mechanics using echocardiography and central pressure assessments. He leads the integration of clinical echocardiography services with clinical research to incorporate this novel imaging marker into standard clinical practice. This integration has the potential to significantly improve the early diagnosis of heart failure and patient outcomes.