Dr. Merner pursued her graduate studies at Memorial University of Newfoundland in Canada, where her dissertation focused on the genetics of hereditary breast cancer, deafness, and a specific form of sudden cardiac death (arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy, or ARVC).
Her primary focus was in the application of next-generation sequencing techniques for the identification of genes associated with essential tremor, autism spectrum disorder, insensitivity to pain, and epilepsy.
