Gwilym studied Medicine and Physiological Sciences at the University of Oxford graduating in 2001. He returned to the North West for postgraduate medical training and worked in Prof Mark Boyett’s lab between 2006 and 2009 for his PhD investigating ion channel expression in the pacemaker of the heart (the sinus node) and the use of gene therapy to prevent sinus node disease, a “bio-pacemaker”. His PhD was followed by registrar training as a cardiologist with further specialisation in cardiac arrhythmia. During this time he investigated novel genes for use as a bio-pacemaker and, along with Prof Boyett, started to investigate the causes of sinus node disease and atrial arrhythmia in athletes.
In 2012 he was awarded a British Heart Foundation Travel Fellowship to study the mechanisms of atrial fibrillation with Prof Jonathan Kalman at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. This work formed the basis for a translational research project investigating the link between the common heart rhythm disorders sinus node disease and atrial fibrillation, for which he was recently awarded a British Heart Foundation Intermediate Clinical Research Fellowship.