Tom Solomon
Pandemic and emerging-infection risk has moved from a public-health concern to a recurring shock to operations, supply chains and workforce continuity. Most boards still treat it as a once-a-decade event rather than a standing exposure on the risk register. The capability gap is between the science of what is coming and the strategic decisions leaders have to make before it arrives.
Tom Solomon is Professor of Neurology at the University of Liverpool and Director of The Pandemic Institute, helping boards and risk leaders understand emerging-infection risk as a strategic exposure rather than a medical specialism.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Tom Solomon
- He has run the UK research response to Ebola, Zika and COVID-19 through the NIHR Health Protection Research Unit he founded in 2014, giving boards a direct line into how national systems actually react under pressure.
- He translates frontier infectious-disease science into the language of operational risk, capital allocation and continuity planning, which is rare among clinicians at his level.
- His role as Director of The Pandemic Institute means he sees the next wave of biosecurity, antimicrobial resistance and zoonotic threats before they reach the public-policy conversation.
- He carries the institutional weight of CBE, FMedSci, the Academy of Medical Sciences vice presidency and the Royal College of Physicians academic vice presidency, which earns him a hearing in rooms that would discount commentators.
- He communicates with the clarity of a science journalist and the authority of a clinician, a combination senior audiences pick up on within the first ten minutes.
Biography highlights
- Professor of Neurology, University of Liverpool, and Director of The Pandemic Institute
- Founding Director, NIHR Health Protection Research Unit in Emerging and Zoonotic Infections
- Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), 2021 Birthday Honours
- Vice President (International), Academy of Medical Sciences; Academic Vice President, Royal College of Physicians
- Author, Roald Dahl’s Marvellous Medicine (Liverpool University Press, 2016)
- Royal College of Physicians Moxon Medal for outstanding observation and research in clinical medicine
Biography
Pandemic and emerging-infection risk has stopped behaving like a tail event. Ebola, Zika, COVID-19 and a steady stream of zoonotic threats have made it a recurring exposure for organisations whose operations depend on movement, contact and supply. Tom Solomon has been inside the national response to each of these.
He founded the NIHR Health Protection Research Unit in Emerging and Zoonotic Infections in 2014 and now directs The Pandemic Institute at the University of Liverpool, a coordinated hub bringing infectious-disease science, public health and policy into one operational picture. He chaired government research funding committees during COVID-19 and advised the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency on vaccine safety. The brief was practical, not theoretical.
The scientific work runs in parallel. His Liverpool Brain Infections Group has secured more than £25 million in research funding from the Medical Research Council, Wellcome Trust and NIHR for work on Japanese encephalitis, enterovirus 71 and meningitis, with field programmes across Asia, Africa and Latin America. He has held the Vincenzo Marcolongo Memorial Lectureship and the RCP Moxon Medal, and was elected to the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2021.
What makes Solomon useful to leadership audiences is that he speaks the language of risk and decision-making, not the language of the clinic. He writes regularly for The Guardian, The Independent and The Conversation, and his book Roald Dahl’s Marvellous Medicine, based on his time treating Dahl as a junior doctor at the John Radcliffe in Oxford, demonstrated early that he could translate clinical material for a general reader. Boards looking for an authoritative voice on biosecurity find a clinician who is fluent in both registers.
Key speaking topics
- Pandemic preparedness and biosecurity risk
- Emerging and zoonotic infectious disease
- Antimicrobial resistance
- Brain infections and neurological disease
- Lessons from the COVID-19, Ebola and Zika responses
- Science communication and public trust in expertise
- Global health and one-health systems
Ideal for
- Boards and risk committees adding pandemic and biosecurity exposure to the standing risk register
- Chief Risk Officers, Chief Medical Officers and continuity leads in pharma, insurance, logistics and global manufacturing
- Government, regulatory and policy audiences shaping pandemic preparedness frameworks
- Senior teams in life sciences, public health and global development
Audience outcomes
- A clearer view of which emerging-infection threats matter most over the next five to ten years and why
- A working vocabulary for treating pandemic risk as a board-level exposure, not a medical externality
- Insight into how the UK national response was organised, what worked, and what did not
- A frame for evaluating biosecurity, AMR and zoonotic risk against other forms of systemic exposure