Research Team

Kathy Oka is CORE's administrative coordinator. She received bachelor's degrees from University of Southern California and University of Puget Sound. Oka brings with her extensive experience from her years of working at UCLA in health science departments, including Dean's Office, School of Medicine; Radiation Oncology; Orthopaedic Surgery and Medicine. Her most recent position as the GI fellowship coordinator at the Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA makes her an integral part of the CS-CORE team as she lends her knowledge of management as well as four years working with the team's director, Brennan Spiegel, MD.

Taylor Dupuy has been working with Cedars-Sinai Center for Outcomes Research and Education (CS-CORE) for more than four years. During this time, Taylor has worked on many different research projects with a focus on digital health. Taylor has assisted in VR for pain reduction clinical trials as well as helping to coordinate the digital health conference Virtual Medicine. Taylor enjoys conducting research on digital health technologies because it is something that can make a huge difference in the life of a patient and can be extremely beneficial. Before coming to Cedars‐Sinai, Taylor worked as a research assistant at the UCLA Addictions Lab. Taylor graduated with a bachelor's in psychology from UCLA and currently lives in the valley with his two cats.

Sam Eberlein joined the team at Cedars-Sinai Center for Outcomes Research and Education (CS-CORE) as a clinical research coordinator after graduating from Cedars‐Sinai’s Master's Degree in Health Delivery Science program in the summer of 2019. He received his BS in biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins University in 2017. Sam's previous experiences includes working alongside orthopaedic surgeons in the Metzger Lab at Cedars‐Sinai between 2017‐2019 and interning at the Andrews Institute for Orthopedics & Sports Medicine in Gulf Breeze, Florida, during the summer of 2016. His research interests include the evaluation of therapies and visualizations of data sets to identify trends and key areas of opportunity.

Carine Khalil is a health services researcher at the Cedars-Sinai Center for Outcomes Research and Education (CS-CORE) and an associate professor in management and information systems at Paris Descartes University. She earned her PhD in management and information systems at Telecom ParisTech in France. Her research interests include human‐centered design, information and communication technologies and social media analysis in healthcare. She is specialized in qualitative research including ethnography, ethnomethodology and grounded theory.

Xiaoyu Liu, MPH, is a clinical research data specialist at CS-CORE and recent graduate of the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, where he received his master's degree of public health from the Department of Health Policy and Management. He also received his bachelor of science degree in management from Wuhan University in China. Liu came to CS-CORE as a health services research intern, during which he collaborated on a virtual reality (VR) project to develop a standardized methodology for clinical trial of VR in healthcare and assess the methodological quality of previously published clinical therapeutic VR studies. Liu is currently working on a project funded by PCORI (Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute) to compare the effectiveness of different patient-provider communication strategies in the management of chronic pain. His broad research interests include patient-provider communication, chronic pain care, cost-effectiveness, digital health, and mental health.

Jennifer Soares completed her undergraduate degree at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She received her master of science degree in public health with honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She moved to the West Coast upon completing her degree to pursue a career in health services research. Soares joined CS-CORE as a research coordinator in 2003 and has been involved in the development of patient reported outcome measurement instruments in a variety of GI conditions for eventual use in clinical trials. Since she became the center's deputy director, much of Soares' work relates to the contracting, budgeting and management of the center's staff members, fellows and affiliates.