In the stem cell laboratory, our focus is on finding new treatments for patients with epilepsy that cannot be treated with currently available anti-epileptic drugs. To do this, we take patient cells and turn them into stem cells – cells which can then be directed to become any cell in the body. To study epilepsy, we then instruct these cells to become brain cells or neurons – the cells which are affected in epilepsy.  This allows us create a personalised ‘epilepsy-in-a-dish’ model for each patient, on which we can then test a variety of existing or new anti-epileptic drugs. Importantly, this personalised model allows testing without any risk to the patient and can be scaled up to allow high-throughput screening of thousands of potential life-changing drugs.