The American Brain Tumor Association has awarded the 2018 Lucien Rubinstein Award to Yekaterina (Katie) Shpanskaya. Katie is a 2018 ABTA Medical Student Summer Fellowship recipient and a student at Stanford University School of Medicine. Under the mentorship of Kristen Yeom, MD of Stanford University Medical Center, Katie conducted research focused on using quantitative imaging techniques as a non-invasive way to characterize the pediatric tumors, medulloblastoma. Their goal is to be able to use this technology to determine medulloblastoma subtypes in patients without requiring a sample of the tumor for genetic testing. Click here to read Katie’s research project summary. 

The Lucien Rubinstein Award is given to the Medical Student Summer Fellowship recipient who scored the highest marks from a panel of expert scientific reviewers on his/her project’s final progress report. Recipients of this award receive $1000 in recognition of their outstanding work. The award is named in honor of the late Lucien J. Rubinstein, MD, who was a pioneer in neuropathology at the University of Virginia and a world-renowned brain tumor researcher. 

The ABTA would like to thank the scientific reviewers for their insightful review of all of the applications. For more information about research funded by the American Brain Tumor Association, visit https://www.abta.org/research/research-funding-impact/.