Laura A. Gould

My primary research focuses on improving our understanding of sudden unexplained deaths in childhood (SUDC) and febrile seizure related deaths. My clinical and research backgrounds include clinical investigations and translational research, as well as, neurologic physical therapy, biomechanics and ergonomics to maximize function associated with neurologic disease and injury related disabilities.

My area of research originally stems from a personal experience. In 1997, my 15-month-old daughter died suddenly without explanation. The experience led me to recognize the lack of awareness for such deaths within the clinical and medicolegal death investigation system, lack of standards specific to child death investigations, lack of support for those affected and a profound lack of research into unexplained child deaths. I initiated the first sudden unexplained death in childhood (SUDC) research in the U.S. with Dr Henry Krous out of the University of California-San Diego where we published the first definition of SUDC in 2005. In parallel, I cofounded the first organization devoted to SUDC (sudc.org), and advocated for U.S. state and federal legislation that became law to support SUDC efforts.

In May 2014, I joined NYU as a Research Scientist in the Department of Neurology and launched the SUDC Registry and Research Collaborative (SUDCRRC) with Dr Orrin Devinsky to further the pursuit of discovering the risk factors, cause(s) and ultimate prevention of unexplained child deaths. The SUDCRRC (www.sudcrrc.org) is the largest known repository of SUDC case information worldwide available for research.  

My efforts with federal working groups, the Medical Examiner, Coroner and Death Investigator professions continue as a means to improve investigations, standardization and data quality available for research as well as compassionate treatment of families affected.
In recent years, the SUDCRRC has improved our understanding of SUDC by explaining previously unexplained deaths, identifying genetic mechanisms and modes of inheritance, discovered insights from omics data that differentiate SUDC from explained deaths, provided evidence of the underestimation of SUDC by the U.S. death investigation system, identified risk factors and confirmed some seizure-related deaths. 

As a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurology, I am the Co-Principal Investigator of the SUDCRRC and collaborate with the wide expertise of our colleagues at NYU Langone Health and external collaborators around the world to further enable research progress in areas such as artificial intelligence, pathology, epidemiology and clinical research of children living with febrile seizures. For more detailed information about the SUDC Registry and Research Collaborative, visit www.sudcrrc.org.