Dr Nathan Absalom has been employed as a Lecturer of Pharmacogenomics at Western Sydney University since 2022. He was awarded his PhD in 2004 at UNSW for his work in molecular neuroscience on the "Structure and Function of the Glycine Receptor". He was awarded a Wellcome Trust Research Training Fellowship where he worked at Oxford University and the MRC Harwell under Professor Frances Ashcroft and Prof Roger Cox investigating genetic causes of infantile diabetes and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. He returned to Australia for a postdoctoral position at the University of Sydney in 2008 where he worked on the pharmacology and function of GABA_A receptors, before gaining independence with a successful NHMRC Ideas Grant in 2019 on developing precision medicines for patients with genetic epilepsies caused by variants in GABA_A receptors. He has discovered new forms of genetic epilepsies where these receptors are hyperactive that lead to severe and intractable seizures beginning from the first days of life, and higher risk of intellectual disability, movement disorders and early mortality. He actively works with patient advocacy groups to help families understand what will happen to their child and is developing novel therapies for these patients.

Dr Nathan Absalom is at the interface of basic and clinical science. His work seeks to understand how genetic variants cause severe childhood epilepsies and their association with different clinical aspects of the disease. He is known for his seminal research paper in 2022 that overturned decades of understanding of a major genetic form of epilepsy associated with GABAA receptors, showing that patients segregated into two different clinical groups based on the change in molecular function.

Dr Absalom is fascinated by how ion channel receptors work in the brain and what happens when they go wrong. He is dedicated to improving the lives of severely affected patients and their families affected by genetic variants in these channels. This interface of genetics, neuroscience and clinical research consumes the research interests of Dr Absalom.

Dr Absalom did his PhD at the Garvan Institute of Research under the supervision of Dr Trevor Lewis and Professor Peter Schofield, understanding how ion channels work. He received a Wellcome Trust Research Training Fellowship and a Diabetes UK Project grant to work at the University of Oxford and MRC Harwell investigating genetic causes of diabetes and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease between 2004 to 2008. He then worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Sydney until 2022 working on the pharmacology and function of GABA_A receptors, the major inhibitory receptor in the brain.