Frank L. Hanley, MD, professor of cardiothoracic surgery and director of the Children’s Heart Center, was appointed the first holder of the Lawrence Crowley, MD Endowed Professorship in Child Health in December 2004. Hanley also directs the pediatric cardiac surgery programs at two satellite surgical sites—Children's Hospital Central California in Madera and Sutter Memorial Hospital in Sacramento—making the expertise of Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital available to these communities.

Hanley earned his BA from Brown University and his MD from Tufts University School of Medicine. He completed a surgical internship at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), where he later became chief resident in both general surgery and cardiothoracic surgery and completed a research fellowship at UCSF’s Cardiovascular Research Institute. Prior to joining Stanford’s faculty in 2001, Dr. Hanley was a tenured professor and chief of the Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery at UCSF. He received the Excellence in Teaching Award in the Department of Surgery in 1994. Prior to joining the UCSF faculty, he was on the faculty at Children’s Hospital Boston and served as associate professor at Harvard Medical School from 1989 to 1992.

His research and clinical work focuses on the development of interventional techniques for fetal and neonatal treatment of congenital heart disease, pulmonary, vascular physiology, and the neurologic impact of open-heart surgery. He developed and pioneered the “unifocalization” procedure, in which a single procedure is used to repair a complex and life-threatening congenital heart defect rather than several staged open-heart surgeries as performed by other surgeons. Currently, Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital is a worldwide referral site for patients requiring these procedures.

Dr. Hanley is actively involved in exploring new approaches for the surgical repair of pediatric heart disease and is developing evidence-based guidelines for clinical care. He is a member of many professional societies, including the American Heart Association, the American Association for Thoracic Surgery, the Howard C. Naffziger Surgical Society, and the Society of Thoracic Surgeons. Dr. Hanley is a frequently invited guest lecturer, having given more than 75 presentations at regional, national, and international conferences and symposiums, and having published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, and authored or edited three major textbooks.