John R. Terry

John R. Terry is a British mathematician, currently an Interdisciplinary Professorial Fellow and EPSRC Established Career Fellow at the University of Birmingham,[1] where he is Director of the Centre for Systems Modelling and Quantitative Biomedicine.[2] He was previously Director of the EPSRC Centre for Predictive Modelling in Healthcare, a £2M initiative funded by the EPSRC.[3] He is well known for the development and application of mathematical techniques in biology and medicine, notably epilepsy and neuroendocrinology. He is a member of the ILAE task force on Network Diseases,[4] as well as previously being a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of Epilepsy Research UK (2018-2023).[5] He currently serves as Theme Lead for Enabling Technologies of the newly established Epilepsy Research Institute.[6] According to Gateway to Research he has received approaching £13M in research funding,[7] a substantial amount for a mathematician. His research has been recognized internationally, most recently by the University of Melbourne through a Miegunyah Fellowship.[8]

Career

Terry was an undergraduate at the University of Reading before taking a PhD at the University of Surrey. He has held academic positions at Loughborough University, the University of Bristol, the University of Sheffield and the University of Exeter, before joining the University of Birmingham in 2019. During his time at the University of Exeter he established the Centre for Biomedical Modelling and Analysis,[9] of which he was co-director,[10] supported by the Wellcome Trust.

In 2018 Terry with Dr Wessel Woldman co-founded Neuronostics,[11] a company focussed on epilepsy diagnosis and management. In 2020 Neuronostics was named national start-up of the year by Medilink UK.[12] In 2021 Neuronostics was one of the final four in the Nature SpinOff Prize.[13] In 2022 Neuronostics was named a winner in the Science StartUp category of the Falling Walls Foundation.[14] In 2024 Neuronostics achieved further international success winning $125,000 in the Epilepsy Foundation Sharktank,[15] whilst Terry himself was recognised for his work with Neuronostics, being awarded Founder of the Year by TechSpark.[16]

Scientific contributions

As a graduate student, Terry focused on synchronization problems in solid state laser systems,[17] before moving into neuroscience during his postdoctoral career. He is most well known for his work in describing the mechanisms of seizures and susceptibility to epilepsy,[18] utilising mathematical models for the first time in the context of diagnosis[19] and surgery.[20] He is also highly cited in the field of neuroendocrinology, where along with Stafford Lightman he has described the pituitary-adrenal interplay responsible for hourly rhythms in the stress responsive hormone cortisol.[21]

References

  1. ^ "Prof John Terry | Mathematics | University of Birmingham".
  2. ^ "Centre for Systems Modelling and Quantitative Biomedicine".
  3. ^ "£10 million for new maths centres to tackle life-threatening diseases - EPSRC website".
  4. ^ "Commission on Neurobiology // International League Against Epilepsy".
  5. ^ "Research strategy - ERUK website". 8 June 2019.
  6. ^ "Theme Leads - ERI Website". 21 September 2024.
  7. ^ "John Robert Terry - University of Exeter". Archived from the original on 4 March 2016.
  8. ^ "Fellows: Chancellery (Academic & International)". Archived from the original on 22 December 2015. Retrieved 19 December 2015.
  9. ^ "University of Exeter".
  10. ^ "Meet the team- Centre for Biomedical Modelling and Analysis - University of Exeter". Archived from the original on 3 October 2016. Retrieved 1 October 2016.
  11. ^ "Home". neuronostics.com.
  12. ^ "Neuronostics win Start Up Award at the Medilink UK Healthcare Business Awards 2020 — Medilink South West".
  13. ^ Bender, Eric (24 June 2021). "Accelerating the diagnosis of epilepsy with computer modelling". Nature. doi:10.1038/d41586-021-01666-9. PMID 34168360. S2CID 235633519.
  14. ^ "Neuronostics LTD. | Falling Walls".
  15. ^ "SharkTank Winners".
  16. ^ "Tech Spark Winners - TechSpark Website".
  17. ^ Terry, J. R.; Thornburg Jr, K. S.; DeShazer, D. J.; VanWiggeren, G. D.; Zhu, S.; Ashwin, P.; Roy, R. (1999). "Synchronization of chaos in an array of three lasers" (PDF). Phys. Rev. E. 59 (4): 4036–4043. Bibcode:1999PhRvE..59.4036T. doi:10.1103/physreve.59.4036. hdl:10036/20792.
  18. ^ Terry, J. R.; Benjamin O.; Richardson, M. P. (2012). "Seizure generation: The role of nodes and networks". Epilepsia. 53 (9): e166 – e169. doi:10.1111/j.1528-1167.2012.03560.x. PMID 22709380. S2CID 25085531.
  19. ^ Schmidt, H.; Woldman, W.; Goodfellow, M.; Chowdhury, F. A.; Koutroumanidis, M.; Jewell, S.; Richardson, M. P.; Terry, J. R. (2016). "A computational biomarker of idiopathic generalized epilepsy from resting state EEG". Epilepsia. 57 (10): e200 – e204. doi:10.1111/epi.13481. PMC 5082517. PMID 27501083.
  20. ^ Goodfellow, M.; Rummel, C.; Abela, E.; Richardson, M. P.; Schindler, K.; Terry, J. R. (2016). "Estimation of brain network ictogenicity predicts outcome from epilepsy surgery". Scientific Reports. 6 (1): 29215. Bibcode:2016NatSR...629215G. doi:10.1038/srep29215. PMC 4935897. PMID 27384316.
  21. ^ Walker J. J.; Terry J. R.; Lightman S. L. (2010). "The origin of pulsatility in the HPA-axis". Proc. R. Soc. B. 277 (1688): 1627–1633. doi:10.1098/rspb.2009.2148. PMC 2871854. PMID 20129987.