Dr. Cynthia Powell is a Professor of Pediatrics and Genetics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine, where she sees patients, teaches students, residents and fellows, and participates in research. She is a board-certified clinical geneticist, cytogeneticist, pediatrician and genetic counselor. She completed her pediatric residency at Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C. and medical genetics fellowship at Children's National Medical Center and the National Institutes of Health. She is Past Chair of the U.S. federal Advisory Committee on Heritable Disorders in Newborns and Children and a member of the Board of Directors of the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics. She is Past President of the Association of Professors of Human and Medical Genetics and the American Board of Medical Genetics and Genomics. She serves on the North Carolina Newborn Screening Advisory Committee. Her research interests include newborn screening, genomics, birth defects and genetic syndromes. She led the North Carolina Newborn Exome Sequencing for Universal Screening (NC NEXUS) project, a five year project funded by NIH investigating the utility of next generation sequencing in newborns.