Inorganic Chemist. Professor Gao obtained his PhD from Peking University in July 1991, and was promoted to full professor at PKU in 1999. He has served as Executive Vice President and Provost of Peking University. Since June 2016, Professor Gao has held a concurrent post as the Vice Chairman of the 9th and 10th National Committees of the China Association for Science and Technology. In October 2018, he moved to South China University of Technology from PKU as a president. In November 2021, Professor Gao was appointed as President of Sun Yat-sen University.

He serves as an advisory editor for Chemical Science and the editor-in-chief of Inorganic Chemistry Frontiers, and the deputy editor-in-chief of National Science Review. He is also the editor-in-chief of the Dictionary of Chemistry (Science Press, 2018). His research primarily focuses on magnetic molecules and their applications in quantum information technology and biomedicine. He has made significant contributions to the fields of magnetic molecular solids with magnetic-electric ordering, molecular nanomagnets, and quantum coherent control of magnetic molecules. He has won three second-class National Natural Science Awards, respectively in 2006 (as the first person-in-charge), 2011 (as the fourth person-in-charge), and 2019 (as the second person-in-charge). In 2013, he received the Science and Technology Progress Award from the Ho Leung Ho Lee Foundation.

Professor Gao was elected an academician of the Division of Chemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, UK in 2007. In 2013, he was elected an academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Developing World.