Shelly D. Timmons BA, MD, PhD, FACS, FAANS

Shelly D. Timmons, MD, PhD, FACS, FAANS, hails from London Mills, IL, in west central Illinois, where she grew up on a farm with one brother, her parents, and a large extended family. She graduated from Spoon River Valley High School as valedictorian in 1983. She obtained undergraduate degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in Honors Biology (BS 1987) and Rhetoric (BA 1988) and obtained her medical degree from the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria in 1991.

She completed her residency training in neurological surgery at the University of Tennessee in Memphis in 1997, under the chairmanship of Drs. James T. Robertson and Jon H. Robertson. In 2002, she earned her PhD in Anatomy and Neurobiology, studying noradrenergic modulation of calcium channels in pyramidal neurons with Robert C. Foehring, PhD.

Dr. Timmons practiced neurological surgery for thirteen years with the Semmes-Murphey Clinic in Memphis, TN. In 1997, she was appointed Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurosurgery and Chief of the Neurotrauma Division, as well as Chief of Neurosurgery at the Regional Medical Center at Memphis / Elvis Presley Memorial Trauma Center. She was promoted to Associate Professor in in 2008 and retained that appointment until 2011.