He undertook postgraduate medical and neurological training at the Newcastle upon Tyne university teaching hospitals and at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford and at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, Queen Square, London, London. He undertook neurological research training as an MRC clinical training fellow at the UCL Institute of Neurology, National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, Queen Square, London. Hanna was appointed consultant neurologist to the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, Queen Square, London, University College Hospital, NHS FT in 1998 and promoted to University College London professor of clinical neurology in 2006. He was clinical director of the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery from 2007-2012; the largest neurological disease hospital in the UK assessing over 130,000 patients per year. He commenced as Director of the UCL Institute of Neurology, Queen Square, London in 2012. The UCL Institute of Neurology is the largest neurological research institute in the UK with over 1400 research staff and students and an annual turnover of £81m. In 2019 the institute held £261m in active research grants from external funders including MRC and Wellcome
Awards and achievements
In 2008 Hanna established the MRC Centre for Translational Research in Neuromuscular Disease.. This has transformed the experimental medicine landscape in the UK for neuromuscular diseases and enabled many natural history studies and clinical trials. It established a National biobank of >5000 patient samples for research and has supported the training of over 34 clinical and non clinical PhD students. Hanna established and is Director of a new MRC International Centre for Genomic Medicine in Neuromuscular Diseases in 2019. This £5.5m strategic award links 14 centres in India, Turkey, South Africa, Zambia and Brazil to advance genomics for patients and establish an international fellowship training programme. He was voted best clinical teacher by clinical medical studentsyear 2000. He has delivered a number of keynote lectures and memorial lectures worldwide including the UK,, and the prestigious Ian MacDonald Lecture. He was elected a Guarantor of Brain in 2009, and a corresponding member of the American Neurology Association in 2010. He delivered the Inaugural Chopra Oration to the Indian Academy of Neurology in Hyderabad in 2019. He was elected to the Fellowship of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2019.
