Robin Williams

My parents were "Ten Pound Poms" (provided with a one-way ticket to Australia for £10 in the 1960’s as means of attracting professional immigrants from the UK). I was born and raised in Australia, and graduated with a First Class degree in Biochemistry from Sydney University and a PhD in Molecular Cell Biology from Melbourne University.

I then took up a postdoctoral position at St Andrews University in Scotland, and a subsequent postdoctoral position at UCL, where I started work using Dictyostelium as a model system. Having been awarded a prestigious Wellcome Trust Career Development Award to start my own research group at UCL, I started exploring the molecular mechanisms of valproic acid, and the development of improved treatments.

In 2006, I moved to RHUL as a Senior Lectureship, then Reader and Head of Biomedical Sciences in 2009, and Professor of Molecular Cell Biology in 2012. I continue to research in epilepsy, bipolar disorder, Alzheimer’s disease and toxicology research in Dictyostelium and animal models.