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- Professorial Clinical Research Fellow
- Department of Targeted Intervention
- Div of Surgery & Interventional Sci
- Faculty of Medical Sciences
Professor Lovat was a scholar at City of London school. He studied medicine at UCL and received his PhD at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, now part of Imperial College London. He was Head of Department for the Research Department for Targeted Intervention from 2013-2018. He now serves as the Clinical Director of the Wellcome and EPSRC funded WEISS Centre at UCL, an £18 million centre to speed the translation of surgical med-tech into routine clinical use.
Prof Lovat convened the annual Barrett's Oesophagus research symposium at UCL on behalf of the Heartburn Cancer UK charity for 10 years and now co-organises the CRUK International Oesophageal Cancer Symposium. He is a specialist advisor to NICE.


The main focus of the research is to develop and rapidly translate novel interventional technologies into the clinic with a major interest in artificial intelligence (AI) to detect and diagnose oesophageal and colorectal cancer. Within the UCL WEISS Centre, of which he is clinical director, there are series of ongoing studies to identify and characterise subtle lesions during endoscopy and colonoscopy (e.g. the CADDIE trial. https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04325815).
The team is also exploring whether salivary epigenetics can be used as a liquid biomarker by using bioinformatic approaches in the SPIT study (http://www.isrctn.com/ISRCTN11921553). Prof Lovat is also the national lead for the British Society of Gastroenterology AI Task Force.
COVID-19 UPDATE
The UCL CONFESS Study explored spatiotemporal droplet production during speaking and singing and the implications for face mask use. This led to the UCLH Charity funded Safe Return Study which aims to develop mitigation strategies to make clinical spaces safe again from respiratory borne diseases by retrofitting with simple cheap interventions. The work includes both experimental and computational flow dynamic elements.
Professor Lovat supervises MD and PhD research students in the research department for tissue and energy.
He gives hands-on teaching to postgraduate gastroenterology trainees in advanced endsocopic therapy as well as outpatient based teaching to medical students in communication skills.
Professor Lovat also lectures on various MSc and advanced gastroenterology training courses, locally and as a national and international invited speaker.
01-OCT-2013 | Professor of Gastroenterology & Biophotonics | Research Department for Tissue & Energy | Division of Surgery & Interventional Science, United Kingdom |
01-OCT-1999 | Consultant Gastroenterologist | UCL Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, United Kingdom |
1987 | Bachelor of Medicine/Bachelor of Surgery | University College London |