MD from Heidelberg University in 1991, then post-doctoral fellow and visiting team leader (1996-1998) at EMBL Heidelberg, where he worked on his habilitation (MD PhD equivalent) in Biochemistry on titin-based sarcomere assembly at Heidelberg University in 1998. After nine years at EMBL, Professor Gautel was awarded a Heisenberg Fellowship by the German Research Foundation and joined the Max-Planck-Institute of Molecular Physiology, Dortmund, as a group leader. He was appointed as Professor of Molecular Cardiology at King’s College London in 2002 and holds since 2008 the British Heart Foundation Chair of Molecular Cardiology at King’s. He is the Head of School of Basic and Medical Biosciences and the KCL BHF Centre of Research Excellence Muscle Cell Biology theme. Professor Gautel was awarded the International Society for Heart Research (ISHR) Outstanding Investigator Award in 2009 and was elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci) in 2010. The laboratory uses molecular genetic, cell biophysical and biophysical, biochemical, structural, and physiological methods to study the biological principles that underpin sarcomere assembly, signalling, and controlled proteolytic turnover. Current areas of interest include mechano signalling by muscle cytoskeletal proteins, their cross-talk with the proteolytic systems of muscle and gene expression regulation, and the perturbation of these processes in acquired and inherited muscle diseases.