Season 4 Research Advisors


Tina Duong, PT, PhD
Dr. Duong is a research physical therapist at Stanford with over 19 years of clinical experience in evaluating, treating and validating clinical outcomes for patients with neuromuscular disease.  She is involved in ongoing studies and developments on initiatives in treatments for neuromuscular disease, novel trial designs, and outcomes development. Prior to her arrival at Stanford University in 2015, she directed clinical evaluations and training for the Cooperative International Neuromuscular Research Group (CINRG) in Washington DC.


Emily Grant, MD, FAAP
Emily Grant is a general pediatrician at Benefis Health System in Great Falls, MT. She completed medical school at University of California Irvine and residency at UC Irvine-Children’s Hospital of Orange County before moving to Montana to enjoy rural medicine and an outdoors lifestyle.


Peter Kannu, MB, ChB (Otago), PhD, DCH, FRACP
Dr. Peter Kannu is a Pediatrician and Clinical Geneticist who works on diseases affecting the skin and bones.

After completing medical school and pediatric training in New Zealand, he moved to the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute/Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne where he trained in Clinical Genetics. He then went on to complete a PhD in cell matrix biology at the University of Melbourne. Prior to Edmonton, he worked as a Consultant Clinical Geneticist at the Victorian Clinical Genetics Service in Australia and Queen’s University in Ontario. In 2010, he was recruited to the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto because of his specialist skills in the human chondrodysplasias. At SickKids, he developed the first Canadian multidisciplinary genodermatosis clinic in collaboration with pediatric dermatologists. He is now the Chair of Medical Genetics at the University of Alberta.


Jerry R. Mendell, MD
Jerry R. Mendell, MD, Professor of Pediatrics and Neurology at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and The Ohio State University College of Medicine in Columbus, Ohio. He also holds the Juanita Curran and Dwight Peters Chair of Pediatric Research at the Abigail Wexner Research Institute. Dr. Mendell has published over 400 journal articles, most of them focusing on neuromuscular disease, along with books on myopathies, peripheral nerve disorders, and gene therapy. He has done seminal studies on the use of gene therapy for individuals with neuromuscular disease.


Rodrigo H. Mendonça, MD
Dr. Rodrigo Mendonça is a neurologist at the Clinical Hospital at the University of São Paulo (USP). He is a member of the neuromuscular diseases group at the same center, with a focus on spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) and other rare genetic neuromuscular disorders.


Sabrina Yum, MD
Dr. Yum is an Associate Professor of Clinical Neurology and Pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. She also is an attending neurologist and neuromuscular specialist, as well as the Clinical Director of the Charcot Marie Tooth disease (CMT) Center of Excellence at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). Dr. Yum earned her medical degree from Guangzhou Medical College in China and was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Center for Neural Injury at the University of California San Francisco/Veterans Administration Medical Center. Dr. Yum completed her residency in Pediatrics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine/Montefiore Medical Center in Bronx, New York, followed by a fellowship in pediatric neurology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, and a fellowship in neuromuscular diseases and EMG at the University of Pennsylvania. Yum is board-certified in neuromuscular medicine, neurophysiology, and neurology with special qualification in child neurology.