Professor Tom Solomon CBE
President
Professor Tom Solomon CBE BA, DCh, DTMH, FRCP, PhD
Roles
Director, The Pandemic Institute, Liverpool
Vice President (International), Academy of Medical Sciences
Director, NIHR Health Protection Research Unit in Emerging and Zoonotic Infections
Chair, Neurological Science, University of Liverpool
Honorary Consultant Neurologist, Walton Centre NHS Foundation Trust.
Career
I studied medicine at Wadham College, Oxford, before undertaking a PhD on central nervous system infections in Vietnam, with a Wellcome Trust Advanced Training Fellowship. I then became a Clinical Lecturer in Neurology, Medical Microbiology and Tropical Medicine at the University of Liverpool, and was awarded a Wellcome Trust Career Development Fellowship. This included two years as a visiting scientist at the University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, Texas. I was made a Senior Lecturer in Neurology in Liverpool in 2005, and awarded a Medical Research Council Senior Clinical Fellowship the same year. I became Chair of Neurological Science in 2007, and Head of the newly formed Institute of Infection and Global Health in 2010.
Research
I head the Brain Infections Group, which, with more than 9 million pounds in funding in recent years, works to reduce the burden of neurological disease in the UK and globally.
Public engagement
This has included national TV and Radio work, as well as widening participation work with local schools. Raising awareness and charity funding my Running Mad Professor video on YouTube got nearly 20,000 hits: I won the Guinness World Record for the fastest marathon dressed as a doctor in 2010, and more recently a Guinness World Record for the Largest Human Image of an Organ – the World’s Biggest Brain to celebrate the first World Encephalitis Day.