The Rodney L. White Center for Financial research is committed to cultivating the next generation of finance leaders in academia and industry. We offer programs that teach, hone, and apply quantitative research skills that will advance candidates into finance PhD programs and related careers.
Pre-Doctoral Research Associate Program
The center offers specially qualified recent college graduates interested in applying to PhD programs the opportunity to work directly with Wharton finance faculty as full-time Research Associates. Each Research Associate will work in this challenging position for 1-2 years and emerge prepared to apply for PhD programs in economics, finance, public policy, business, or other quantitative social-science programs.
Research Associates will be encouraged to be an active part of the Wharton research community, which can include attending seminars, exploring personal research interests, and taking graduate-level classes at Wharton. The Research Associates will join a cohort of pre-doctoral research associates both in the Finance Department and across other departments at the Wharton School.
Scroll down for more information and to apply for current openings.
Meet our Associates:
Ding Ding
Education: China Foreign Affairs U/LSE, Uchicago
Faculty Supervisors: Karen Lewis and Yao Zeng
Vitor Furtado Farias
Education: University of Notre Dame
Faculty Supervisors: Joao Gomes and Luke Taylor
Hazel He
Education: The Chinese U of Hong Kong/Carnegie Mellon
Faculty Supervisors: Allison Nicoletti and Christina Zhu
Paige Stevenson
Education: Macalester College, St Paul MN
Faculty Supervisors: Gideon Bornstein, Sasha Indarte, and Sergio Salgado
Shuman Zhang
Education: U Minnesota/NYU
Faculty Supervisors: Winston Dou and Marius Guenzel
Yizhong Zhang
Education: Duke
Faculty Supervisors: Lu Liu, Sean Myers, Chaojun Wang
Interested in Becoming a Pre-Doctoral Research Associate?
The Center encourages outstanding recent college graduates with an interest in pursuing a PhD in a finance related field to apply to open positions. A complete application includes a cover letter explaining why you want to become a pre-doc, a resume/CV, and the most recent transcript.
Read about Tanvi Jindal’s journey to becoming a pre-doc.
There are currently no openings, all pre-doc positions have been filled.
Undergraduate Research Fellow Program
Highly qualified Penn undergraduates can become Center Research Fellows. Fellows assist PhD candidates with their advanced dissertation research. This work can include building financial models and collecting and analyzing data. The PhD candidates serve as mentors, training Fellows on financial tools, concepts, and research.
The program is open to UPenn undergraduate students only. Opening announcements are posted each spring in specific department, Wharton School and University research opportunity websites.
Meet our Fellows:
Arjun Agrawal SEAS’26
Computer Science and Mathematical Economics
PhD Supervisor: Jack Fu
Brianna Geng W’26
Economics and Computer Science
PhD Supervisor: Jeanna Kenney
Ruixi Gong CAS/SEAS’24
Economics and Data Science
PhD Supervisor: Clara Xu
Arjun Khanna CAS’26
Mathematical Economics
PhD Supervisor: Sergey Sarkisyan
Amy Zhang W’26
Finance and statistics
PhD Supervisor: Guanyu Zhou