George Hanna

Professor George Hanna is the Head of the Department of Surgery and Cancer at Imperial College London's Faculty of Medicine. His clinical focus includes oesophageal and gastric cancer surgery and advanced laparoscopic techniques. He holds leadership roles such as President of the European Association of Endoscopic Surgeons (EAES) and Director of multiple NIHR initiatives.

He trained at Ninewells Hospital under Sir Alfred Cuschieri, earned a PhD in laparoscopic surgery (University of Dundee, 1997), and joined Imperial College as a Clinical Senior Lecturer in 2003, advancing to Professor in 2008. His research emphasizes non-invasive breath tests for gastrointestinal cancers, funded by CRUK, MRC, and NIHR, targeting biomarker discovery via VOC analysis.

His laboratory investigates VOC-based diagnostics for oesophageal, gastric, pancreatic, liver, and colorectal cancers. He leads studies like SEATTLE (therapy response tracking), NEED-2 (oesophageal cancer validation), and VOCAL (liver cancer detection). He also develops competency assessment tools for surgical training and quality assurance.

• Education: FRCS (Edinburgh, 1993), PhD (University of Dundee, 1997)
• Leadership Roles: Director of NIHR London In-Vitro Diagnostics Co-operative, Co-lead of CRUK Convergence Science Centre
• Research Themes: VOC biomarkers, surgical innovation, cancer diagnostics

His awards include Fellowship of the Academy of Medical Sciences. Current projects integrate AI for VOC data analysis and health economic modeling of breath tests. He collaborates widely, with teams based at Hammersmith Hospital and Imperial's research centers.