Haotian joined the Cai lab as a post-doctoral research associate in November 2025 to work on the synthetic plant chromosome project. He earned his bachelor’s degree in bioengineering and his PhD in bioengineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, under the supervision of Prof. Hongzhi Tang and Prof. Patrick Cai. During his PhD, in collaboration with Prof. Junbiao Dai at Shenzhen institute of advanced technology (SIAT), CAS, Haotian worked on developing synthetic bacterial strains to degrade toxic aromatic compounds. In his free time, Haotian enjoys playing video games, reading, running, and watching sports.