Professor Hisham Mehanna is the Chair of Head and Neck Surgery, and Director of the Institute of Head and Neck Studies and Education, at the Institute of Cancer and Genomics, Deputy Pro-Vice Chancellor (Interdisciplinary Research), Director, The Institute for Global Innovation (IGI) and the Institute for Advances Studies (IAS) University of Birmingham. Hisham’s clinical interests are recurrence head and neck cancer surgery. Prof Mehanna established and ran the UK’s first clinic dedicated to the multi-disciplinary treatment of head and neck and thyroid cancer recurrence. Hisham has a keen interest in clinical and translational research, heading a research team of 20 researchers, and holding over £16 million in research grants. His main area of his research revolves around improving the management of head and neck cancer through the use of innovative treatments and dynamic risk stratification and assessment. His research spans translational research, early and late phase clinical trials. He is chief investigator of several multicentre and multinational clinical trials, including the PET NECK trial, published in the NEJM in 2016, and the De-ESCALaTE study, published in Lancet 2018. He is also the President of the Head and Neck International Group, and a past President of the British Association of Head Neck Oncologists (BAHNO), and the past Chair of the UK’s National Cancer Research Institute’s head and neck group, responsible for all head neck cancer research in the UK.