"[7] Abell was educated at St John's College, Cambridge,[4] gaining a Bachelor of Arts degree in Natural Sciences in 1979 followed by PhD[8] on the topic of polyketide biosynthesis for research supervised by James Staunton in 1982.

[9] Abell held a research fellowship in the laboratory of David E. Cane at Brown University, Providence, USA, studying terpene biosynthesis (1982–83).

[4] His research interests include vitamin and amino acid biosynthesis as targets for the rational design of antimicrobials; fragment-based approaches to enzyme inhibition; bacterial and plant riboswitches; reactions in microdroplets;[14] and biological nanotechnology.

[4][10] In 2001, he co-founded Akubio, which developed biosensors for detecting bacteria and viruses; it was acquired by Inverness Medical Innovations in 2008.

[4][9] In 2008 he was the MIT Novartis Lecturer, and in 2011 was a BIC International Fellow at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand.