After qualifying in medicine at Oxford, his research training included three years at the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Vietnam, and two years at the University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, USA.
He works on emerging pathogens, particularly those that affect the brain, heading the multidisciplinary Liverpool Brain Infections Group. His group works to reduce the UK and global burden of emerging neurological infections in adults and children, with major programmes on herpes viruses, arthropod-borne viruses, and COVID-19.
He was an RCP Council member from 2019–2022 and was appointed to the role of censor in 2022. He gave the RCP Linacre lecture in 2006, the RCPE Sydney Watson Smith lecture in 2012 and was awarded the RCP Moxon Medal in 2014. He was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list in 2021.
Tom is a keen teacher, leading the annual Liverpool Neurological Infectious Diseases course, and an enthusiastic science communicator; his popular science book Roald Dahl’s Marvellous Medicine was published in 2016, and followed by a sell-out show of the same name at Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2017.
He won a Guinness World Record in 2010 for the fastest marathon dressed as a doctor, and another in 2014 for his sci-art project The World’s Biggest Brain. He hosts the Scouse Science Podcast and tweets @RunningMadProf.