Professor Tom Solomon BA BM BCh MRCP DCH DTMH PhD FRCP

Personal Statement

ROLES: Director of the National Institute for Health Research Health Protection Research Unit in Emerging and Zoonotic Infections; Head of the Brain Infections Group; Professor of Neurological Science; Honorary Consultant Neurologist, Walton Centre NHS Foundation Trust and Royal Liverpool University Hospital.

---------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 was Director of the newly formed Institute of Infection and Global Health in 2010-2017.

----------RESEARCH: Emerging Infections, particularly those that affect the brain. I head the Liverpool Brain Infections Group, which works to reduce the burden of neurological disease in the UK and globally, through research, training and capacity building, and public engagement.

----------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 YouTuve 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 Wolrd Encephalitis Day (see YouTube).

----------TWITTER @RunningMadProf

Prizes or Honours

• Royal College of Physicians of London, Linacre Lectureship 2006 (Royal College of Physicians of London, 2006)
• Neurology Specialist Registrar Training Weekend ¿ Travel Bursary Competition (Neurology Specialist Registrar Training Weekend , 2004)
• Birmingham Movement Disorder Course April 2004, Video Competition, 1st Prize (Birmingham Movement Disorder Course, 2004)
• Invited Review Article (New England Journal of Medicine, Editorial Board, 2004)
• Charles Symonds Prize (Association of British Neurologists , 2003)

Funded Fellowships