Scientific Grants Review Committee

Grace Hillyer

EdD, MPH |  MADAM CHAIR

Geoffrey Balkman

PhD, CPO

Heather C. Mefford

PhD, MD

Robert L. Nussbaum

MD, FACP, FACMG

Egondu Onuoha

MS, RDN, CDN, IBCLC, CDE/CDCES, GPC, FAND, FILCA

Lark J. Perez

PhD
 

Anne Slavotinek

MBBS, PhD, FRACP, FACMG

The formation of the Scientific Grants Review Committee is a vital step in the SUDC Foundation’s ongoing mission to drive groundbreaking research to better understand, predict, and ultimately prevent Sudden Unexplained Death in Childhood (SUDC).

The Scientific Grants Review Committee will play a pivotal role in guiding the Foundation’s research strategy and shaping the future of SUDC research. Composed of experts from diverse scientific disciplines and extensive experience in grants management, the Committee will be responsible for reviewing grant applications and advising the Board of Directors on research priorities. The Committees’ collective expertise will ensure that our research investments are directed toward the most promising and impactful studies.

The creation of the Scientific Grants Review Committee also underscores the Foundation’s commitment to fostering collaboration and innovation within the scientific community as we work toward a future free of SUDC.

Interested in Joining the Committee? Apply Here

Together with the expertise and dedication of our members, the Scientific Grants Review Committee is poised to accelerate progress and empower the SUDC Foundation’s mission to advance research that brings us closer to living in a world without SUDC.

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Dr. Grace Hillyer

Grace Hillyer brings a wealth of expertise and dedication to the SUDC Foundation Scientific Grants Committee. With a career spanning nearly 45 years, Grace has focused on health and healthcare, with a specific emphasis on public health, epidemiology, and health promotion. After retiring from her full-time role as an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, she continues her impactful work as a Special Researcher at Columbia and an Adjunct Professor of Public Health at William Paterson University.

Grace's research centers on improving health outcomes for minority and underserved populations, with a particular focus on health behaviors, cultural determinants, and educational interventions. Her prolific career includes mentoring numerous students and professionals and authoring over 110 peer-reviewed papers. She has also secured sustained grant funding from prestigious organizations, including the Department of Defense, National Cancer Institute, and Stand Up to Cancer. 

Dr. Geoffrey Balkman

Geoffrey Balkman, PhD, CPO, is a Certified Prosthetist-Orthotist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine at the University of Washington. He conducts research at the University of Washington Center on Outcomes Research in Rehabilitation and teaches in the Master of Prosthetics and Orthotics clinical education program. He has served as principal investigator on grant awards funded by the American Orthotic and Prosthetic Association and The Orthotics and Prosthetics Foundation.

 

His research efforts have primarily focused on measuring health outcomes of people who use orthotic braces or prosthetic limbs. He has training and expertise in research study design, survey development, and outcomes assessment. He also has experience serving as a research committee member and grant reviewer for professional organizations. Since his 7-year-old son, Carson, died in his sleep in 2022, Dr. Balkman has been eager to contribute his skills to SUDC research and looks forward to serving on the SUDC Foundation's Scientific Grants Review Committee. 

Heather Mefford PhD, MD

Dr. Heather Mefford is a physician-scientist and a Member of the Center for Pediatric Neurological Disease Research at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. She earned her MD and PhD in Genetics from the University of Washington (UW), followed by a residency in Pediatrics and a fellowship in Medical Genetics at UW and Seattle Children’s Hospital. Dr. Mefford established a research program focused on the genetics of rare pediatric diseases at UW, where she remained until joining the Pediatric Translational Neuroscience Initiative at St. Jude in 2021. Her research is dedicated to gene discovery in pediatric neurological disorders, focusing on epilepsies. She has played a key role in defining the genetic landscape of rare developmental and epileptic encephalopathies using cutting-edge genomic technologies.
Currently, her team is working to leverage information about genetic etiology to develop precision therapies using engineered and patient-derived cellular models of genetic epilepsy. Dr. Mefford serves as a scientific advisor to several patient advocacy groups, co-chairs the ClinGen
Epilepsy Gene and Variant Curation Working Groups, and is the Secretary of the Board for the American Society of Human Genetics. She has been elected to the American Society of Clinical Investigation and is a recipient of the Excellence in Basic Science Research Award from the
American Epilepsy Society.

Robert Nussbaum

Robert L. Nussbaum, MD, FACP, FACMG, is a Volunteer Professor at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and a part-time Medical Affairs consultant for Illumina, following his retirement in 2023 as Chief Medical Officer of Invitae. Before joining Invitae, he served as the Holly Smith Professor of Medicine at UCSF, having previously worked in the intramural research program of the National Human Genome Research Institute at the NIH. Dr. Nussbaum received his undergraduate and medical degrees from Harvard University, completed his residency in internal medicine at Washington University, and trained in medical genetics at Baylor College of Medicine. He is a Founding Fellow of the American College of Medical Genetics and has held leadership roles, including Director and President of the American Society of Human Genetics.
He has authored nearly 400 peer-reviewed publications and is co-author of the leading textbook Genetics in Medicine, for which he received the ASHG Genetics Education Prize with his co-authors Hunt Willard and Rod McInnis. His research contributions have been recognized with prestigious awards, including the Klaus Joachim Zülch Prize for Neurological Research from the Max Planck Society and the Van Andel Prize for his work on Parkinson’s disease.
Dr. Nussbaum has served for over two decades as Chair of the Medical-Scientific Advisory Board of the Lowe Syndrome Association and currently co-chairs the Gnomics Roundtable of the National Academy of Medicine. He was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2004 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2015.

Egondu Onuoha, MS, RDN, CDN, IBCLC, CDE/CDCES, GPC, FAND, FILCA

Egondu is the Vice President for Real Estate and Special Programs at the Brooklyn Hospital Center in NYC. In this role, she overseas maternal and child programs and manages the WIC program, which serves over 20,000 women, infants, and children monthly across seven Brooklyn locations. Previously, she was the Director of the hospital’s Prenatal Care Assistance Program; Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children and administrator for the Nurse Family Partnership, and diabetes programs.

Egondu has secured more than $300 million in grants, expanded access to services for underserved communities, recruited and cultivated a diverse staff that reflects the communities, and improved operational and financial performance through innovation and grants.

Egondu holds credentials as a Registered Dietician, an international Board Certified Lactation Consultant, a Certified Diabetes Educator, and a Grant Professional Certified. She is also a Fellow of both the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and the International Lactation Consultant Association.

In addition to her professional achievements, Egondu has over 20  years of board experience, having served on numerous local, state, national and international boards. She currently is the Board President for the Grant Professional Certification Institute (GPCI) and continues to serve as a federal grant reviewer for several federal agencies. She resides in New York City.

Together with the expertise and dedication of our new members, the Scientific Grants Review Committee is poised to accelerate progress and empower the SUDC Foundation’s mission to advance research that brings us closer to living in a world without SUDC.

Dr. Lark Perez

Lark J. Perez, PhD, is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry at Rowan University. Born and raised in Southampton, New York, he graduated with honors from Long Island University in 2002. During an internship with Prof. D. John Faulkner at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, he developed a passion for organic chemistry. He went on to pursue
graduate studies at Yale University, where he earned his Ph.D. in 2008 under the mentorship of Prof. Glenn C. Micalizio, focusing on innovative methods of carbon-carbon bond formation.

Dr. Perez completed his postdoctoral work at Princeton University in the laboratories of Prof. Martin F. Semmelhack and Prof. Bonnie L. Bassler, where he explored cellular signaling related
to bacterial pathogenesis. He began his independent career at Rowan University in 2012, concentrating on organic synthesis, medicinal chemistry, natural products, and chemical signaling. His research has received continuous support from institutions such as the National Institute of Health, National Science Foundation, United States Department of Agriculture, the New Jersey Health Foundation, and industry partners.

In honor of his 16-month-old son, Atley, who passed away from Sudden Unexplained Death in Childhood (SUDC) in 2021, Dr. Perez is deeply committed to applying his expertise to advance scientific research in SUDC.

Anne Slavotinek  MB.BS, Ph.D, FRACP, FACMG

Dr. Slavotinek is certified in Clinical Genetics and worked as a Medical Geneticist at UCSF from 2002 until 2022, prior to moving to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center as Division Director for Human Genetics. She specializes in rare diseases, dysmorphology, and clinical genomics. Dr. Slavotinek received her medical degree from the University of Adelaide and her Ph.D from Flinders University whilst studying in Edinburgh at the MRC Human Genetics Unit.
She trained in Clinical Genetics in the U.K. and then did a postdoctoral Fellowship and a Genetics Fellowship at the National Institutes of Health. She has participated in leadership activities at the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics and for the American Board of Medical Genetics and Genomics.
Dr. Slavotinek is a Co-Editor in Chief for the American Journal of Medical Genetics and an author on more than 260 peer-reviewed publications. She was a Principal Investigator for the Program in Prenatal and Pediatric Genomic Sequencing Grant at UCSF that was part of the Clinical Sequencing Evidence Generating Research (CSER) consortium.
She also directs a laboratory that uses next-generation sequencing technologies and animal models to study the etiology of developmental eye defects and multiple congenital anomaly syndromes.