The Bashir Ahmed Graduate Fellowship in Demography 

The Bashir Ahmed Graduate Fellowship in Demography provides vital support for dissertation research conducted by students in the Demography PhD Program and the Sociology & Demography PhD Program. Established through a generous gift from alumnus Dr. Bashir Ahmed and his family, the fellowship reflects a deep commitment to advancing demographic scholarship and fostering the next generation of leaders in the field.

Dr. Ahmed was a member of Demography Graduate Cohort 1. He received his training at UC Berkeley under the mentorship of distinguished faculty, including Drs. Ronald Lee, Kenneth Wachter, and Eugene Hammel. After completing his PhD in 1984, he began his career as a National Institute of Child Health and Human Development postdoctoral fellow at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He later served as an Associate Demographer at the University of Florida’s Bureau of Economic and Business Research and taught graduate-level courses as an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Sociology.

Dr. Ahmed went on to build a distinguished career at the U.S. Census Bureau’s Population Division, where he held a series of influential roles—Demographic Statistician, Supervisory Demographic Statistician, Special Assistant to the Deputy Director, and ultimately Demographic Advisor & Reviewer. During his tenure, he completed several prestigious leadership and executive training programs, including the Excellence in Government Fellows Program and the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government Senior Executive Fellows Program. Dr. Ahmed was awarded the Master’s Certificate in Project Management from the George Washington University School of Business.

A hallmark of Dr. Ahmed’s career was his pivotal role in developing the 1990 statistical accounting of uncertainty in census coverage and in pioneering new methodologies for estimating emigration of the foreign-born population – innovations that strengthened national demographic data and informed public policy. More of his scholarly contributions can be found here and in the publications of the Census Bureau’s Population Division.

Now retired, Dr. Ahmed is giving back to the academic community that shaped his career. Through this fellowship, he seeks to empower promising scholars whose work will continue to advance the field of demography and broaden our understanding of population processes worldwide.

2025 Awardees

Juana Montoya Murillo

Juana Montoya Murillo is a PhD candidate in Demography at the University of California, Berkeley, specializing in reproductive health and gender dynamics in Latin America. Her dissertation analyzes how the legalization of abortion in Colombia has reshaped fertility trends and women’s reproductive decisions. The research uses a mixed-methods design, drawing on national Vital Statistics, survey data, and original qualitative in-depth interviews. Her work demonstrates how dimensions of cultural practice, including gender norms, interact with an evolving legal landscape to shape women’s access to health care.

Chris Soria

Chris Soria is a PhD candidate in Demography at UC Berkeley. His research focuses on social networks and health, examining how social structure correlates with mortality at the county level, how partisan social networks can exacerbate disease outcomes, and how loneliness impacts aging and health. He also works on applying large language models to demographic research, developing methods for text classification and computational analysis of survey data. His work bridges social demography, epidemiology, and computational methods to understand population health dynamics.