Robert Hawkins is Cancer Research UK Professor and Director or Medical Oncology at the University of Manchester and Christie Hospital. His research interests are in gene and immunotherapy. In addition to clinical training at the Royal Marsden Hospital and Addenbrookes Hospital in Cambridge he was an MRC Research Fellow with Dr Greg Winter at the MRC laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge. His PhD was in antibody engineering and his subsequent translational research interests have focused on developing antibody based therapy. He undertook the first UK trial of plasmid vaccination which was targeted to idiotypes on B cell malignancies. His current laboratory research focuses on engineering T cells to expressing chimeric receptors based on scFv fragments. He also heads a clinical group undertaking a range of early phase clinical trials of biological agents including vaccines, antibodies and cellular therapy.