The Wharton Doctoral Council
@ The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
Our Mission
The Wharton Doctoral Council’s mission is to foster a interdepartmental social and research community for Wharton doctoral students.
The WDC is run by Wharton PhD students for Wharton PhD students. The WDC receives its funding through GAPSA and the Wharton Doctoral Programs office which allows for several events to be held every year at no cost to the PhD students.
Meet the Board
Evan Weingarten, President
Evan Weingarten is a fourth year joint PhD student in Marketing and Psychology. He studies both how consumers browse and consider retail structures and how the accessibility of various cues in the environment can subsequent consumer decision-making.
Prior to joining Wharton, Evan graduated as a student marshal from University of Chicago with an A.B. in Psychology and Economics.
Colin Sullivan, Co-Vice-President of Ventures
Colin Sullivan is a second year doctoral student in Applied Economics, and holds an AB in Economics and Political Science from the University of Chicago and an AM in Statistics from Harvard University. His research addresses public finance, labor economics, and education. A data geek trained in the dark arts of frequentist and Bayesian data analysis, he vows never to do algebra in public.
Lesley Meng, Co-Vice-President of Operations
Lesley Meng is a second-year doctoral student in the Operations Management track. Lesley's research interests are primarily in the areas of healthcare operations research and health policy decision making. Lesley has worked on modeling projects for emergency room operations, cancer laboratory test processes, medical procedure cost-effectiveness, and population level cancer screening, among others.
Lesley holds an Honors Specialization in Medical Science from the University of Western Ontario, an Honors in Business Administration degree from the Richard Ivey School of Business, and a Masters of Public Health in Health Policy and Management from Columbia University.
Prior to joining Wharton, Lesley worked as a Research Associate at the Massachusetts General Hospital Institute for Technology Assessment. During her Masters she worked as a Project Analyst at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and as a Research Assistant at the Harvard School of Public Health.
Ryan Peters, Treasurer
Ryan H Peters is a Ph.D. student in Finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he researches topics in macroeconomics, corporate finance and entrepreneurial finance. He graduated from the University of Chicago with a B.A. in Statistics, Economics and Mathematics.
Before attending graduate school at Wharton, Ryan worked in the macroeconomic forecasting and research groups at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, where he studied the effects of fiscal policy and contributed to federal open market committee research reports.
Gemma Moran, Duchess von Teschen
Gemma Moran is a second-year doctoral student in Statistics. She received her Bachelor of Science (Honours Class I) from the University of Sydney with majors in Mathematics and Statistics. Her research interests include genomics, model selection, MCMC methods and variational Bayes.
Jennie Huang, Secretary of East Egg
Jennie Huang is a second year doctoral student in Applied Economics. Her research interests lie in behavioral and experimental economics particularly in the fields of charity, gender, and family economics. Prior to joining Wharton, Jennie graduated from the University of Chicago with an AB in Economics and worked as an economic consultant for Navigant Economics.
Andy Wu, Wharton GAPSA Representative
Andy Wu is a Ph.D. student in Applied Economics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he researches topics in strategy, corporate finance, and public finance, with a focus on entrepreneurship and technological innovation. His current research looks at incumbent-entrepreneur alliances in the biotechnology industry, new technology discovery by venture capitalists, and incidental innovation in US defense procurement. He is part of the teaching staff for Entrepreneurship in the Executive MBA program and Risk Management in the Undergraduate and MBA programs.
He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a Burchard Scholar with an S.B. in Economics and in Mathematics, where he served as President of the Everett Moore Baker House and the Undergraduate Economics Association.
Previously, Andy worked on business development at MassChallenge Inc., the world’s largest global startup competition, where he advised the President and CEO on business development strategy, sourced potential sponsors, and assisted experienced investors, lawyers, and entrepreneurs with judging process. He also worked on M&A transactions in life sciences, retail, and defense industries and general restructuring practice at the Peter J. Solomon Company. He has also worked closely with Professor Jonathan Gruber on research in health care economics and assisted in the writing of “Public Finance and Public Policy, 3rd Edition”, the leading public finance textbook in the U.S.