Hanson is genetic resources specialist at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI). She has a PhD from the University of Birmingham (1975) and more than 35 years of experience in seed conservation and genebank management, mostly in developing countries. She has broad experience with conserving, studying and using forage diversity and is currently project leader for forage diversity at ILRI. She has experience in development of training and knowledge tools and was involved in the development teams for the Selection of forages for the tropics and Crop genebank knowledge base tools. Current research interests at ILRI include management of forage genetic resources, morphological and nutritional characterization, seed production, forage adoption and knowledge sharing.
She is a genetic resources specialist with 40 years of experience in seed conservation and genebank management, mostly in developing countries. Following her PhD in seed storage for genetic resources conservation in 1975 from the University of Birmingham in the UK, she began her career as a post-doctoral scientist working with the maize germplasm bank at CIMMYT (1976-1978). She worked as a Technical Cooperation Officer for the British Government doing research on the storage of recalcitrant seeds of tropical tree fruits in Indonesia from 1978 to 1983. During 1983 to 1985 she assisted Bioversity International (formerly IPGRI) in their seed conservation activities and visited national programmes in several countries to give advice on seed storage and genebank management. She joined the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI and formerly ILCA) in 1986 as genebank manager and from 1989-2010 led the project on forage genetic resources, also acting as Interim Director of Institutional Planning at ILRI from 1996 to 2001. She continued as scientific advisor on the project from 2011-2013 and returned to the position of project leader for forage diversity at ILRI in 2014. Current research interests include management of forage genetic resources, morphological and nutritional characterization, seed production, forage adoption and knowledge sharing.