Leadership Team
The Leadership Team of the Penn Med Symphony Orchestra is formed of members who are passionate about music and the future of the orchestra.
David Zhang - Music Director
Yvonne Balgenorth - President
Dan Zhang, MD, PhD - Co-Founder
Gina Chang, MD - Co-Founder
Charlotte Monsour
Nimay Kumar
Andrew Devaney
Kristen Park
Jenny Hong
About The Leadership Team
David Zhang - Music Director
David Zhang is the current conductor and music director of the Penn Med Symphony Orchestra and has been involved with the group since 2021. He first started conducting in high school where he led a student-run orchestra. He continued throughout college and would organize orchestral repertoire read-throughs for Boston-area youth orchestra musicians. Additionally, he started learning violin at the age of 3 and has played in numerous orchestras including at the New England Conservatory and the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestras. Aside from PMSO, he is a 4th year MD-PhD student at the Perelman School of Medicine and has a bachelor’s degree in computer science and biology from Cornell. His primary research area is focused on large-scale genomics and leveraging computational methods and electronic health records to study genetic risk for disease.
Yvonne Balgenorth - President
Yvonne Balgenorth is the current president of the Penn Med Symphony Orchestra and has been involved with the ensemble since 2019. She began learning piano at the age of 4 and later left her home in Alaska to study piano performance at Interlochen Arts Academy. There, she engaged in master classes by pianists including Emanuel Ax and Alexandre Tharaud, and would collaborate in performance with artists such as Grammy Award winning chamber ensemble Eighth Blackbird. Outside of continuing to record and perform since, Yvonne taught piano for years to students of all levels in Philadelphia. Beyond music, she received her bachelor’s degrees in Neuroscience & Behavior and Molecular Biology & Biochemistry from Wesleyan University prior to working in research at the Penn Frontotemporal Degeneration Center. Currently, she is a student at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, with aims to work in neurology as a nurse practitioner.
Dan Zhang, MD, Phd - Co-Founder
Daniel Zhang is a co-founder of the Penn Med Symphony Orchestra and its previous music director. He started studying the violin at the age of 4, and, inspired by the numerous wonderful experiences playing in youth orchestras in the Boston area, he became interested in conducting. He first started conducting at his high school, where he also co-founded and led the Newton South Sinfonietta. In college, he founded and conducted the MIT IAP orchestra, and was also involved with a number of local groups, such as the Boston Opera Collaborative. Outside of his musical activities, he has a bachelor’s degree in chemistry & biology from MIT and an MD-PhD from the Perelman School of Medicine. His research focuses on the functional genomics of brain tumors and the development of organoid models of cancer. He is currently a neurosurgery resident at Penn, and hopes to pursue a career as a physician-scientist-conductor.
Gina Chang, MD - Co-Founder
Gina Chang is a Child Neurology resident at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. She grew up in the Bay Area, California and attended Washington University in St. Louis, where she majored in Neuroscience and minored in Psychology and Ancient Studies. She completed her medical studies at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, where she also earned a master’s in public health, with a research focus on racial/ethnic disparities in pediatric health care delivery. Gina began playing the cello at the age of 7 and has been a member of the El Camino Youth Symphony and the Washington University Symphony Orchestra, where she served as assistant principal cello. During college, she also played cello and organized concerts for Orchestrating Diversity, an El Sistema organization that provides free intensive music education to underserved students in St. Louis. She co-founded the Penn Med Symphony Orchestra in the summer of 2016 and was also involved in creating the medical school’s "Humanism & Professionalism through Music" elective course.
Charlotte Monsour
Charlotte Monsour is a 3rd-year MD/PhD student at the Perelman School of Medicine. She grew up in Los Angeles, CA, and started playing violin at the age of 5. Growing up, she played in the Verdugo Young Musicians Association and Pasadena Youth Symphony Orchestra, and she joined PMSO in Fall 2022. Outside of music, she received a BS in Biochemistry from Cal State LA, and her current research focuses on using phosphorescence lifetime imaging to investigate the role oxygen plays in FLASH radiotherapy.
Nimay Kumar
Nimay is a current grad student at the Department of Computer & Information Science at University of Pennsylvania, and has been a cellist for PMSO since Fall 2022. He grew up learning piano and saxophone and began learning cello in 2021.
He completed his undergraduate studies in Electrical & Computer Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin in 2020. Once he graduates from Penn he hopes to continue his career in software engineering and machine learning. In his spare time he enjoys running, visiting new countries, dancing Argentine tango, and spending time with his dog, Zelda.
Andrew Devaney
Andrew Devaney is a cellist of 16 years, and is the principal cellist of the Penn Medicine Symphony Orchestra and former principal cellist of the Drexel University Symphony Orchestra. He has been featured as soloist in the PMSO’s performance of the Dvorak Cello Concerto in Fall 2023, as well as Prokofiev’s Sinfonia Concertante when he was at Drexel. He is also an active chamber musician in the Philadelphia area. He completed his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Biology at Drexel in 2021, and is currently an Associate Scientist at the Philadelphia cell therapy startup Century Therapeutics. His primary research interest is in the development of next-generation cancer therapeutics through protein engineering.
Kristen Park
Kristen Park is a 3rd year MD-PhD student at the Perelman School of Medicine. She grew up in the Bay Area, California and started playing the clarinet at the age of 8. She was the principal clarinetist of the California Youth Symphony and played with the CA All-State Orchestra. In college, she studied with faculty at the Peabody Conservatory and played with the Hopkins Symphony Orchestra and the Homewood Chamber Music Seminar. Outside of music, Kristen received a BS in neuroscience from Johns Hopkins and is currently studying the functional impact of glioma-neuron synapses.
Jenny Hong
Jenny is a second-year medical student at the University of Pennsylvania. She grew up in Mason, Ohio and attended Harvard College where she majored in Chemical and Physical Biology with a minor in Psychology. She began playing the violin at the age of 10 and has been a member of the Cincinnati Symphony Youth Orchestra and the Ohio Music Education Association All-State Ensemble. She currently serves on the social and merch board for the Penn Med Symphony Orchestra. In her free time, she enjoys baking and doing the New York Times crossword.
Alumni
Past members of the leadership team of the Penn Med Symphony Orchestra.
Sarah Kim, MD
Martin J. Baker, PhD
Andrea Jin, MD
Kerith Wang, MD
About The Alumni
Sarah Kim, MD
Sarah was a medical student at the Perelman School of Medicine and is currently a resident at CHOP. Originally from NJ, she graduated from Yale University where she majored in Economics and History; she studied health economics and wrote her thesis on the failure to launch socialized medicine in the United States in the 1940s and 50s. At Yale, she was the co-president of the Davenport Pops Orchestra, the university’s largest student-run orchestra. Sarah has played the violin since she was eight.
Martin J. Baker, PhD
Dr. Martin J. Baker was a postdoctoral research scientist at the University of Pennsylvania and is currently a researcher at CRUK Manchester Institute. His research focuses on the study of signaling networks inside cancer cells that drive metastasis. He has also played bassoon in Penn Med Symphony Orchestra since the orchestra was founded in 2016.
Andrea Jin
Andrea Jin is a fourth-year medical student at the Perelman School of Medicine, with hopes of pursuing a career in primary care and public health. She joined the Penn Med Symphony Orchestra in 2017 while working in research on the chromosomal structure of 22q deletion syndrome at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Andrea grew up in the Philly area playing viola in the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra and Temple Music Prep chamber orchestras. As an undergraduate, she continued to perform with the Cornell Symphony Orchestra and various chamber ensembles while earning her bachelors degree in cell & molecular biology and minor in music. Since returning to Philly, she is glad to have continuing opportunities for making music and hopes to keep doing so throughout school.
Kerith Wang
Kerith Wang is in her fourth year at Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University. She grew up in Delaware and started playing violin at the age of 3. Through the years, she was a part of the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra, Honors Performance Series at Carnegie Hall, and Strings International Music Festival. In college, Kerith continued playing violin in the university orchestra, for which she also worked as the Music Librarian, and she also picked up the bass guitar, acoustic guitar, and singing in the worship team at church.
Outside of music, Kerith has a degree in Ecology and a minor in Global Health from Princeton University, and she worked in oncology for a few years. These fostered her interest in primary care and the connections between the environment and health. When there is time, you’ll find her baking new recipes, traveling the world (42 countries so far), running along the Schuylkill, or enjoying all kinds of art from music to theater and origami and books.