Abdul studied Chemistry for his MSci at Imperial College London, including an industrial placement in organic synthesis at Syngenta. This culminated in a Masters project in the Schumann lab at the Crick, where he employed chemical  tools to probe the substrate specificities of glycosyltransferases. 

Abdul has continued research in glycobiology through the Imperial College London Institute for Chemical Biology Centre for Doctoral Training PhD programme. His project is jointly supervised by Ben Schumann and David Hewings (Vertex Pharmaceuticals) where he aims to use state-of-the art chemical tools in conjuction with chemical genetics approaches to shed light on glycosylation during protein maturation in the secretory pathway.