2023 Pong S. Lee Awardees Announced

A man wearing a plain slate gray shirt holds a certificate and smiles as he stands on the right side of the image, next to man in a blue plaid button up and glasses.

In recognition of outstanding student research, the economics department has awarded the Pong S. Lee Award to Zhendong Li for his third-year paper, "Forecasting Economic Time Series in Presence of Weak Factors: Multiple Supervised Learning-Based Approach." Supervised by Professor Ulrich Hounyo, Li's paper proposes an improved method to predict trends using advanced statistical and machine learning methods. Li will be honored with a prize of $500.

A woman in a black dress with long, dark hair holds up a certificate and smiles as she stands on the right side of the image, next to man in a blue plaid button up and glasses.
Yiran Han, right, recieves honorable mention, along with a prize of $250, as part of the Pong S. Lee Award recognition.

Additionally, the department is pleased to extend an honorable mention, along with a prize of $250, to Yiran Han for her paper, "Local Effects of Clinical Trials on Physician Prescribing," supervised by Professor Pinka Chatterji. Han's research compares prescribing patterns across newly approved cancer and diabete drugs and finds that exposure to clinical trials increases prescribing possibility.

The Economics Department congratulates both Zhendong Li and Yiran Han for their exemplary contributions to the field and extends appreciation to Professors Ulrich Hounyo and Pinka Chatterji for their invaluable guidance.