Dr. Weng is an assistant professor in the Food & Resource Economics Department at the University of Florida. She holds a research and extension appointment and specializes in environmental and natural resource economics, valuation of ecosystem service, and water policy. 

Dr. Weng holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Virginia Tech. Before joining the University of Florida, Weng was an assistant professor at SUNY Geneseo. While there, she received the Presential Summer Fellowship and was honored as the Class of 2020 and the Class of 2022 Student-Athletes Honored Professor.  

Dr. Weng’s research program emphasizes the innovative use of economic and interdisciplinary frameworks to quantify the interactions between human and naturalural systems, evaluate potential policy outcomes, and provide a foundation to support science-based policymaking. Using a variety of modern empirical, optimization, and integrated assessment modeling methods, her research explores policy questions related to water pollution, air pollution, land use, agricultural production, and outdoor recreation.

She has studied topics such as the economic value of water quality changes, the co-benefits of water policies, the human-freshwater interactions in lake catchments, the relationship between air pollution and cognitive performance, the impact of COVID-19 on visitation to public recreational parks, climate change impacts on irrigation agriculture, and the use of data visualizations to promote best waterfront management practices.