HSS Presents the Latest Social Science PhD Alumni – Class of 2023

At today's 129th commencement ceremony, Caltech will present roughly 229 bachelor's degrees, 69 master's degrees, and 186 doctoral degrees. The Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences proudly awards PhDs to the following students: Sumit Goel, Daniel Guth, Wade Hann-Caruthers, Claudia Kann, and Jeffrey Zeidel. Please join us in wishing our latest alumni and the entire class of 2023 well in their future endeavors!

Sumit Goel graduates with a PhD in social science and a minor in computer science after completing his dissertation, Essays in Mechanism Design and Contest Theory, with Federico Echenique as his advisor. During his time at Caltech, he was a Linde Institute Graduate Fellow (2019–2020 and 2021–2022) and a Repetto-Figueroa Family Graduate Fellow (2020–2021). Goel will spend the summer as a research member at the Simons Laufer Mathematical Sciences Institute (formerly MSRI), and then he'll begin a postdoctoral appointment at NYU Abu Dhabi.

Applied microeconomist Daniel Guth (BS '16, mathematics) is interested in health and environmental economics. He earns his PhD after defending his thesis, Essays in Health Economics, with Jean-Laurent Rosenthal as his advisor. After commencement, Guth will join the University of Rochester Medical Center as a postdoctoral associate.

Wade Hann-Caruthers (BS '16, mathematics and computer science (minor)) completed his dissertation, Essays on Social Learning and Social Choice, with Omer Tamuz as his advisor, and he will join the Game Theory Group at Technion – Israel Institute of Technology as a postdoc this August. His research interests lie primarily in microeconomic theory, especially social learning, social choice, and mechanism design. Hann-Caruthers was the recipient of the 2019–2020 PIMCO Graduate Fellowship.

After switching fields from mechanical engineering to American politics and political methodology, Claudia Kann (MS '19, mechanical engineering) graduates with a PhD in social science, and she is considering jobs in private industry. She defended her thesis, Computational Methods in the Study of Political Behavior, with Michael Alvarez as her advisor. During the 2021–2022 academic year, Kann was the Stephen A. Ross Memorial Fellow.

Jeffrey Zeidel receives his PhD after completing his dissertation, Essays in Behavioral Economics, with Thomas Palfrey as his advisor. As a graduate student in HSS, Zeidel was a Clarence J. Hicks Scholar (2019–2020 and 2021–2022) and an A. Michael and Ruth C. Lipper Fellow (2020–2021). He also received the John O. Ledyard Prize for Graduate Research in Social Science in 2019 (joint work with fellow social sciences graduate student Joanna Huey). Later this summer, Zeidel will join Goel at NYU Abu Dhabi as a postdoc.