Dr Everett's research focuses primarily on neurogenetics, with an emphasis on identifying the genetic cause of neurodevelopmental disorders. Since joining St George's in 2010, she has established research links with the clinical genetics team at St George's University Hospital NHS Trust. Her education portfolio spans many undergraduate and postgraduate courses at St George's.
Dr Everett is the Course Director for the MSc Genomic Medicine.
https://www.sgul.ac.uk/study/courses/genomic-medicine
Dr Everett read Biology at the University of York before moving to Cambridge University to pursue an MPhil in Biological Anthropology. After a year working in industry, she started her PhD at Cambridge University, funded by Cancer Research UK. The aim of this work was to elucidate the genetic basis of cutaneous malignant melanoma by using melanocytic naevi as a proxy risk measure. This was followed by a move to UCL where she stayed for 7 years before moving to St George's in 2010.
Throughout her career, Dr Everett has been passionate about education as well as research. Early on in her post-doctoral career she contributed to undergraduate and postgraduate teaching at UCL (for example, on the Human Genetics BSc and the MSc in Prenatal Genetics and Fetal Medicine). The opportunity arose to take a lectureship at the Institute of Child Health, at the same time completing the study required to gain Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy.
Dr Everett's research interests have been varied but primarily focus on neurological disorders with a genetic basis. She describes herself as a "Gene Hunter", with her expertise lying in applying analytical approaches required to track down disease-causing mutations without needing to be an expert in that disease!
Dr Everett is affiliated with the Genetics and Genomics Centre in the Molecular and Clinical Sciences Research Institute.
Her research career started with a post-doctoral position in Prof Mark Gardiner's group at UCL where her work on neurological disorders began with an initial focus on common childhood epilepsies. Upon gaining a lectureship at UCL, Dr Everett expanded her research to include another common childhood genetic disorder, infantile hypertrophic pyloric stenosis. During these years, she further developed the skills initially gained during her PhD in genome-wide QTL mapping and mapping of complex genetic disorders. Relocating to the Institute of Child Health in 2008 allowed Dr Everett to start working on rare, monogenic disorders alongside complex traits.
In 2010, Dr Everett gained a Senior Lectureship position at St George's. Here she has established collaborations with clinical colleagues at St George's University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and expanded her research to include rare neurodevelopmental disorders, primarily the epileptic encephalopathies. Her key aim remains to provide patients and their families with a genetic diagnosis. These families are either under the care of the Clinical Geneticists at St George's Hospital or form part of a major ongoing collaboration with Iranian colleagues. This latter work is carried out in conjunction with her colleague in the Molecular and Cell Sciences Institute, Dr Yalda Jamshidi.
Over this time, Dr Everett has been lead PI on grants from Action Medical Research, Epilepsy Research UK and Newlife which have supported this work.
More recently, Dr Everett was successful with Prof Kate Tatton-Brown (also at St George's) in gaining funding from St George's Hospital Charity to pursue research on overgrowth disorders with intellectual disability (OGID). This will use genome-wide sequencing and RNA-seq analysis to identify new OGID genes and determine the pathological impact of the variants identified.
Dr Everett has benefited from generous funding from Action Medical Research, Epilepsy Research UK, Newlife, and St George's Hospital Trust Charity.
Dr Everett teaches students on many different programmes at St George's: BSc/MSci Biomedical Science; BSc Clinical Pharmacology; Undergraduate Medicine; Graduate Medicine; BSc Healthcare Science; and MSc Genomic Medicine.
Since 2010, she has led a specialist final year Biomedical Science BSc/intercalated BSc module in Human Medical Genetics which forms part of the Genomics pathway.
In 2015, Dr Everett helped establish the flagship MSc in Genomic Medicine, jointly taught with King's College London, and has been the Course Director throughout this time (https://www.sgul.ac.uk/study/courses/genomic-medicine). She also leads one of the core modules on the course, Fundamentals in Human Genetics and Genomics.
In 2016, with Prof Kate Tatton-Brown, she established the MSc/PgDip in Clinical Genomics and remains the joint course lead. This is a specialist course for trainee Clinical Geneticists which can be done following successful completion of the PgCert Interpretation and Clinical Application of Genomic Data (https://www.sgul.ac.uk/study/courses/interpretation-and-clinical-application-of-genomic-data).
As well as didactic teaching on the courses, she has developed teaching sessions which are much more interactive, being keen to enhance student understanding through active learning.
Dr Everett enjoys supervising undergraduate and postgraduate project students, encouraging them to develop into modern geneticists, being comfortable in both data analysis and "wet" laboratory work. She also supervises PhD students.
Dr Everett is currently the Deputy Head of the Graduate School (Taught Programmes).