Hilary started her university studies in Australia and then completed her PhD with Peter Donnelly at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics in Oxford in 2015. There, she worked on an eclectic set of projects ranging from rare disease genomics to population genetics of the platypus. She moved to the Sanger Institute initially as a postdoc with Jeff Barrett, and then started her own group there in 2018. Her group analyses large-scale genetic and electronic health record data to explore the genetic architecture of neurodevelopmental disorders and traits, as well as complex diseases in populations with high levels of parental relatedness (consanguinity).

Insights into the genetics of neurodevelopmental conditions and traits from large British cohorts