Akila Weerapana is an Associate Professor of Economics at Wellesley College. He was born and raised in Sri Lanka and came to the United States to do his undergraduate work at Oberlin College, where he earned a B.A. with highest honors in Economics and Computer Science in 1994. Inspired by his professors at Oberlin, he went on to graduate school at Stanford University. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford in 1999, writing his dissertation in monetary economics under the mentorship of John Taylor. Having taught several classes at Stanford while he was a graduate student, Akila was determined to pursue a career as a liberal arts college professor, combining his research interests… with the opportunity to teach economics to gifted college students. Since 1999, Akila has taught over 800 students at the Economics Department at Wellesley College.His teaching interests span all levels of the Department's curriculum, including introductory and intermediate macroeconomics, international finance, monetary economics and mathematical economics. He was awarded Wellesley's Pinanski Prize for Excellence in Teaching in 2002. He also enjoys working with thesis students, having advised over a dozen thesis students at Wellesley. The projects that students work on range from a study of the economic benefits of eradication of river blindness in Ghana to the impact of joining the European Union on the Spanish economy to a project analyzing the determinants of enterprise performance in Russia. He has advised many students who have pursued graduate study in economics or have gone on to work in economic research at the Federal Reserve.In addition to teaching, Akila has research interests in macroeconomics, specifically in the areas of monetary economics, international finance and political economy. In the area of monetary economics, his work focuses on the international dimension of monetary policy, including the potential for gains from coordination and the importance o