Shelly D. Timmons is Professor and Chair of Neurological Surgery at Indiana University Health and Indiana University School of Medicine, where she holds the Betsey Barton Chair in Neurological Surgery and also is Co-Director of the Neuroscience Institute. Dr. Timmons is board certified by the American Board of Neurological Surgery and has certification in Neurocritical Care from the Society of Neurological Surgeons Committee on Advanced Subspecialty Training. Dr. Timmons practices in several areas of neurosurgery and has subspecialty expertise in the fields of neurotrauma and neurocritical care, having directed neurotrauma divisions and neurotrauma/neurosurgical ICUs for nearly two decades.

She has held a variety of professional organizational leadership positions, including President the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, for which she has also served as a Director-at-Large on the Board of Directors and in a variety of other leadership roles. She has been Chair of the Washington Committee of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS) and Congress of Neurological Surgeons (CNS), AANS Representative to the Board of Governors of the American College of Surgeons (ACS), Chair of the Neurosurgery Advisory Council of the ACS, Chair of the Joint Section on Neurotrauma and Critical Care of the AANS and CNS, and Vice President of the Society of Neurological Surgeons. She has served as President of the Tennessee and Pennsylvania Neurosurgical Societies.

Dr. Timmons has chaired several neurotrauma and emergency neurosurgery committees for the AANS, the Washington Committee, the Council of State Neurosurgery Societies and others, and has frequently served as a liaison for trauma-related issues to outside entities on behalf of the AANS, including the Department of Homeland Security and the Institute of Medicine. She served on the American College of Surgeons Committee on Trauma (COT) for eight years, two as a special member, and maintains involvement with the COT via the Verification and Review Committee and the Trauma Systems Consultation Committee, having served as a reviewer for the States of Hawaii, Missouri, and California, and Clark County, Nevada. She served on the Centers for Disease Control National Center for Injury Prevention and Control Board of Scientific Counsellors, for which she chaired the Pediatric Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Guideline Workgroup, and has served on the Board of Directors of ThinkFirst, a neurological injury prevention organization.

Dr. Timmons has been a clinical researcher for a number of years, and has participated as principal investigator in numerous clinical trials related to traumatic brain injury (TBI) through local, industry, and NIH funding mechanisms. She has published and lectured on a variety of topics related to TBI, neurocritical care, spinal cord injury, blunt vascular injury, and health care delivery throughout her career. Her primary research interests include clinical trials in TBI, multi-modality monitoring in neurocritical care, prognostication in TBI, diagnosis and treatment of blunt vascular injury, effects of antithrombotic medications on TBI outcomes, and optimal organization of healthcare delivery for brain-injured patients. She has served on multiple grant review panels, including for the NIH, the DoD, the NFL, the Chuck Noll Foundation, and the Neurosurgery Research and Education Foundation. She sits on several peer-reviewed journal editorial boards as a neurotrauma expert.