Last month, four Cedars-Sinai residents competed in his honor for the 2024 Rubenstein Award for Excellence in Resident Research. The award series—created when Rubenstein worked at Cedars-Sinai—honors Rubenstein’s efforts to transform the medical center from a community hospital to a major academic hub.  

The award aims to foster clinical and translational research, enrich knowledge, and encourage the development of residents across Cedars-Sinai as investigators. 

“This competitive opportunity for young trainees showcases the work they have been doing to catapult clinical and translational research—which was the mission of Dr. Rubenstein’s work,” said Brennan Spiegel, MD, MSHS, chair of the Rubenstein Award Committee, professor of Medicine and director of Health Services Research at Cedars-Sinai. “These residents are an integral part of our research enterprise, ensuring the best-quality ideas and innovations are studied.”  

When he was a Cedars-Sinai resident in 2001, Spiegel competed for the Rubenstein Award. He took home first place.  

The top four finalists who presented their work on May 28, 2024, were residents Robert Kim, MD, PhD; Jeff Liang, MD; Joseph Lownik, MD, PhD; and Samuel Zhang, MD. Each went through a rigorous application process prior to stepping up to the podium. Each competitor submitted an original study abstract as well as a letter of support from their primary mentor.  

Lownik and Zhang took top honors, and each received a $3,000 cash prize.

Lownik’s research, titled “Machine Learning-Based Decision Support System for Clinical Flow Cytometry Analysis,” highlighted how investigators successfully implemented a pathologist-trained, artificial intelligence program to analyze clinical flow cytometry studies to help diagnose leukemia and lymphoma.

“As part of the physician-scientist training program in the Department of Pathology, research is a big part of my residency training, and Cedars-Sinai has been incredibly supportive of this project, and my mentor, Dr. Kitahara, has worked tirelessly on this project with me,” Lownik said. “This award is further validation of the importance of this work, as well as Cedars-Sinai’s commitment to improving patient care through the adaptation of artificial intelligence into the clinical workplace.”

Sumire Kitahara, MD, associate professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Cedars-Sinai, said, “Being Dr. Lownik’s mentor has been incredibly rewarding, especially given the opportune timing to embrace machine learning in clinical medicine. While I had limited experience with computational tools to analyze high-dimensional data, Dr. Lownik’s research background and interest in hematologic neoplasms and clinical flow cytometry, combined with his innovative use of machine learning algorithms, allowed us to transition these research tools into clinical practice. This is particularly significant in hematopathology, where advancements in flow cytometry are producing complex data.” 

The research focus of Zhang’s work is the “Feasibility of Left Anterior Descending Coronary Artery Sparing During Definitive Radiotherapy Planning for Locally Advanced Lung Cancer.” Zhang’s research is among the first to show that it is possible to drastically reduce radiation dose to critical parts of the heart—such as the coronary arteries, which supply the heart with blood and oxygen—without reducing the dose to a tumor or increasing the radiation to other normal organs nearby, such as the lungs. The work involves patients being treated with high-dose radiation and chemotherapy for advanced lung cancer.

“I’m so honored to receive this award from Cedars-Sinai, home to so many important advances in cardiology and oncology,” Zhang said. “I’m also proud to represent my Department of Radiation Oncology, which I feel is a true center of excellence and innovation within our field.”

Zhang’s mentor is Katelyn Atkins, MD, PhD, medical director and assistant professor of Radiation Oncology at Cedars-Sinai.  

“Dr. Zhang exemplifies the qualities of a successful resident physician and researcher, and it has been a joy to mentor him,” Atkins said. “Not only does he take phenomenal care of patients, but he also patiently teaches and mentors medical students and junior researchers and is a consummate team player.”

Atkins said Zhang also ambitiously chose research projects that required learning several new skill sets, to which he diligently committed.

“The work he presented for this award is part of a larger body of work in cardio-oncology that he has expertly put together and is pushing the leading edge of our field to help shape how we deliver safe and effective care.”

Kim’s original research, “Elucidating the Role of Sensory Cortical Areas in Short-Term Memory,” shows that human sensory cortical neurons and sensory model neurons can perform tasks requiring working memory, suggesting their involvement in complex cognitive functions—contrary to previous understanding—and highlighting potential therapeutic targets for neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative conditions.

His mentors are Ueli Rutishauser, PhD, professor of Neurosurgery, Neurology and Biomedical Sciences and director of Human Neurophysiology Research and the Center for Neural Science and Medicine at Cedars-Sinai, and Chrystal Reed, MD, associate professor of Neurology and director of the Neurophysiology Fellowship Program.  

Liang’s presentation, “Development and Validation of Biomarker Index for Hepatocellular Carcinoma Treatment and Response,” focused on the development of a blood-based test that may be helpful for detecting and monitoring hepatocellular carcinoma, although additional tests are needed to confirm its accuracy. His mentor is Ju Dong Yang, MD, medical director of the Liver Cancer Program at Cedars-Sinai Cancer.  

Funding for this year’s event was provided by the Burns and Allen Research Institute and the Clinical and Translational Science Institute at Cedars-Sinai.  

Follow Cedars-Sinai Academic Medicine on X for more on the latest basic science and clinical research from Cedars-Sinai.

The annual award, which includes a $3,000 cash prize, aims to foster basic and clinical research, enrich knowledge, and encourage the development of investigative curiosity in residents from across Cedars-Sinai.

The award honors Paul Rubenstein, MD, Cedars-Sinai’s first director of Medical Education and vice president of professional services, who helped transform the organization from a community hospital into a major academic medical center.

Leggett and Nguyen were two of four finalists who presented their research on May 23 in the Harvey Morse Auditorium to a panel of judges chaired by Brennan Spiegel, MD, MSHS, who received the award over two decades ago.

“It’s always a thrill to come back and introduce our latest and greatest research projects and the amazing four finalists that we’re going to be hearing from today,” said Spiegel, the Dorothy and George Gourrich Chair in Digital Health Ethics and director of Health Services Research at Cedars-Sinai.

The judges recognized Leggett, chief resident in Obstetrics and Gynecology, for her research on ultrasound devices that rely on cellphones and tablets for image display. She is examining whether these pocket-sized devices are reliable clinical tools compared with standard ultrasound technology. Leggett’s findings were published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

Leggett and her fellow investigators conducted an observational study of patients who were between 19 and 39 weeks pregnant and presenting for anatomy scans and growth scans. Each participant was assessed by an expert sonographer using a standard ultrasound machine and the personal-device-based ultrasound technology to determine estimated fetal weight.

The results showed there was a near-perfect agreement between the measurements, with an average difference of only 53 grams.

“This study found that personal-device-based ultrasound devices are reliable tools for performing obstetric ultrasound and that they do improve clinical efficiency when caring for patients. The opportunities for future research are pretty vast,” Leggett explained.

“The portability and affordability of these probes can have huge implications for the feasibility of ultrasound-based research endeavors, whether that’s in the hospital setting, in the outpatient setting, or in low-resource or remote international settings. There are also important applications for training education,” she said.

In the other winning presentation, Nguyen, chief resident in Radiation Oncology and an incoming Cedars-Sinai faculty member, discussed patterns of immune resistance to immunotherapy and radiotherapy in triple-negative breast cancer.

“Triple-negative breast cancer is one of the most challenging types of breast cancer to treat and is more common among premenopausal women and Black women,” said Nguyen.

“Although immunotherapy has demonstrated activity in triple-negative breast cancer, it is unclear how to best treat patients who progress on immunotherapy or patients with metastatic disease who are not eligible for treatment,” he explained.

Nguyen and his co-investigators used high-dose radiotherapy to potentially boost the response to immunotherapy in a mouse model of triple-negative breast cancer. Although immunotherapy commonly targets T-cells, Nguyen hypothesized that a different immune cell type was responsible for dampening down any potential interaction with radiation.

“Tumor-associated macrophages are one of the most abundant immune cell types found in breast cancer,” said Nguyen. “Given that macrophages can activate T-cells, we focused our efforts on understanding how macrophages and neutrophils respond to treatment.”

Nguyen and his co-investigators sequenced tens of thousands of individual immune cells from tumors treated with immunotherapy and radiotherapy to identify key cells that suppress the immune response to treatment.

“We found that macrophages and neutrophils are critical mediators of immunosuppression following immunotherapy and radiotherapy,” said Nguyen.

“Our research provides insight into why these combinations have been inconsistent when tested in clinical trials and provides a novel approach to overcoming resistance to combination therapy,” he said. 

Finalists Emily Truong, MD, and Qiudong “Kevin” Chen, MD, also presented their work. Truong discussed how MRI-AST scores—which are based on specific disease criteria—accurately predict major adverse liver outcomes. Chen discussed the outcomes of heart transplants in patients from socioeconomically distressed communities.

The Rubenstein Award is funded by the Burns and Allen Research Institute at Cedars-Sinai and the Cedars-Sinai site of the Clinical and Translational Science Institute.

Follow Cedars-Sinai Academic Medicine on Twitter for more on the latest basic science and clinical research from Cedars-Sinai.