CHE welcomes PhD students

News

Posted on Friday 23 October 2026

CHE is delighted to welcome two new PhD students, Shang Ting Guan and Benedict Evangelista, whose research will contribute to its work in economic evaluation and health and social care policy.

Shang-Ting Guan

Shang Ting Guan is a PhD student affiliated with Economic Evaluation and Health Technology Assessment (TEEHTA) at CHE. He is supervised by Professor Beth Woods and Dr Jessica Ochalek.

With a background in clinical pharmacy, Shang is interested in epidemiology and health economics, particularly how healthcare decisions are made and what evidence can support them. He completed an MSc in Health Economics at the University of York and was keen to continue working with CHE for his PhD, attracted by its expertise in economic evaluation to inform decision making.

His PhD research will explore the value of medicines throughout their lifecycle, focusing on how generic and biosimilar competition following patent expiry affects medicine prices, access and the distribution of value.

Benedict Evangelista

Benedict Evangelista is a PhD student in Health Economics, joining CHE's health and social care policy theme. His studentship is hosted and funded by the REAL Supply Unit, with matched funding from the University of York. He is supervised by Professor Susan Griffin and Dr Andrea Salas-Ortiz from the University of York and Dr Stephen Allan from the University of Kent.

His PhD research focuses on measuring the burden of formal adult social care workers. His broader research interests include health economics, labour economics, ageing and household behaviour.

Before starting his PhD, Benedict worked as an economic analyst at the Asian Development Bank. He also worked as a research associate for NECVaRE on the Inclusive Social Protection for Chronic Health Problems (ISPCHP) project. The project was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), as part of the Swiss Programme for Research on Global Issues for Development (r4d programme).

Benedict holds a Master of Arts in Economics from the School of Economics at the University of the Philippines Diliman.

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