Dr. Ayesha Mahmud

Biography

Ayesha Mahmud is a demographer with a broad interest in the interplay of human population changes, environmental factors, and infectious disease dynamics. Her research draws on the theory and methods of demography and disease ecology to answer critical questions such as why outbreaks occur in specific years, how the mortality burden of infectious diseases varies over time, and how population travel patterns drive the spatial dynamics of outbreaks. She also explores how global environmental and demographic changes alter the landscape of infectious disease burden in the future. Her work employs statistical methods and biologically mechanistic models to investigate these questions in the context of multiple diseases across countries in Asia, Africa, and Central America, utilizing data from disease surveillance systems, hospital databases, climate models, and human mobility data along with population surveys and censuses. Prior to her appointment at Berkeley, she was a Rockefeller Foundation Planetary Health Fellow at Harvard University.

Research Interests

Courses