David J. Hawkes

Timeline

1. 1974–1982

   Physics degrees and a Surrey PhD

   He earns a BA in natural sciences (physics) at Oxford in 1974 and an MSc in radiobiology at Birmingham in 1975. His PhD, completed at the University of Surrey and the Institute of Cancer Research in 1982, makes use of one of the world's first two whole-body CT scanners.

2. 1982–1998

   Clinical science and a personal chair

   He works for seven years as a clinical scientist at St George's Hospital in London. In 1988, he returns to academia at the United Medical and Dental Schools of Guy's and St Thomas' Hospitals (UMDS), where he receives a personal chair in 1998. At Guy's Hospital he forms the Computational Imaging Sciences Group (CISG).

3. 2001

   A registration book from CRC Press

   Combining several imaging modalities leads him to image registration, and work with real-time imaging and video leads on to image-guided interventions. In 2001, he coauthors the book Medical Image Registration with J. Hajnal and D. Hill, published by CRC Press.

4. 2002–2007

   Imaging sciences chair at King's

   He chairs the Division of Imaging Sciences at King's College London from 2002 to 2004 and directs the £8M EPSRC and MRC funded Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration on Medical Images and Signals (MIAS-IRC) from 2003 to 2007. In 2002, he is elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng). He gives the Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen Honorary Lecture at the European Congress of Radiology in 2006.

5. 2004–2015

   Founding IXICO and CMIC

   In 2004, he co-founds IXICO, a university spin-out that provides imaging solutions to the pharmaceutical industry, with Derek Hill, Daniel Rueckert and Jo Hajnal. In 2005, he founds the Centre for Medical Image Computing (CMIC) at UCL and directs it until 2015.

6. 2009–2016

   Fellowships and the Enduring Impact Award

   In 2009, the MICCAI Society names him a Fellow for scientific contributions to biomedical image analysis and image-guided interventions, and he becomes an NIHR Senior Investigator. He is elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci) in 2011. In 2016, the MICCAI Society gives him its Enduring Impact Award.

7. 2018–2019

   WEISS and the Mansfield Medal

   From 2018 to 2019, he serves as director of the Wellcome EPSRC Centre for Interventional and Surgical Sciences (WEISS) at UCL. In 2019, the Institute of Physics awards him the Peter Mansfield Medal and Prize for his lifetime contribution to medical imaging research.

8. As of October 2026

   Emeritus Professor at UCL

   UCL launches the Hawkes Institute in March 2025, bringing together CMIC and WEISS, and names it in his honour. UCL schedules its Joel Lecture for June 2026 to cover his fifty years in medical imaging and surgical sciences, a story that ends as machine learning and artificial intelligence take off. He is Emeritus Professor in the Department of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering at UCL.