Professor Dave Hawkes' research interests are focussed on both fundamental research in medical image computing and transfer of advanced computational imaging technologies across the whole spectrum of patient management from screening to diagnosis, therapy planning, image guided interventions and treatment monitoring. His specific interests encompass image matching, data fusion, visualisation, shape representation, surface geometry and modelling tissue deformation promoting medical imaging as an accurate measurement tool and image guided interventions. He was awarded a £6M EPSRC Programme grant “Intelligent Imaging: Motion, Form and Function across Scale,” in 2010. He is also PI of the £818k EPSRC Challenge Engineering project "Medical Imaging Markers of Cancer Initiation, Progression and Therapeutic Response" (2013-2016). He is co-I on another EPSRC Grant in high intensity focused ultrasound, and co-I on an NIHR Programme Grant for Applied Research with Steve Halligan (Radiology) on computer assisted detection of colon cancer. He is co-I of two HICF Wellcome/DoH Smart Surgery awards on image guided liver surgery and prostate interventions, each worth approximately £2M, the Wellcome/EPSRC Challenge Engineering £11M Programme in Image Guided Fetal Surgery (2014-2021) and the CR-UK/EPSRC joint KCL/UCL Cancer imaging Centre. He is also on the Boards of the UCL CRUK Cancer Centre and the UCL Medical Informatics Centre. He is currently supervisor or co-supervisor of eight PhD students and author or co-author of over 300 peer reviewed scientific publications.

Most of Professor Hawkes’ translational work is done with some commercial sponsorship and Professor Hawkes is a strong advocate of the need for researchers to work with both healthcare providers and industry. He is co-founder of IXICO Ltd (www.ixico.com) a university spin-out that provides imaging solutions to the pharmaceutical industry, and was Director for several years. He is on the Scientific Advisory Board of several  small start-ups and research organisations.

Professor Hawkes gave the Crookshank Lecture to the Royal College of Radiologist in 2008 and the Wilhelm Roentgen Honorary Lecture to the European Congress of Radiology in Vienna in 2006.

Professor Dave Hawkes founded the Centre for Medical Image Computing (CMIC) at UCL in 2005 and has directed it since then.  He has been co-Director of the CR-UK, EPSRC and DoH funded joint UCL/KCL Comprehensive Cancer Imaging Centre since 2011. He was Chairman of the Division of Imaging Sciences at KCL between 2002 and 2004 and Director of the £8M EPSRC and MRC funded IRC in Medical Images and Signals from 2003-2007.

Since 2010 he has been Director of the EPSRC Programme "Intelligent Imaging: Motion, Form and Function across Scale" and co-Director of the CR-UK/EPSRC joint UCL KCL Cancer Imaging Centre.