PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] – Three alumni from the PSTC training program recently found each other on the other side of the world working as international consultants for United Nations Fund for Population Activities in Myanmar. Michael Philip Guest (Sociology, ’87), Ricardo Neupert (Sociology, ’81), and Liem Nguyen (Sociology, ’04) were all in Nay Pyi Taw as three of the four lead international consultants analyzing the 2014 Population and Housing Census of Myanmar.

“Three generations from the PSTC ended up in one place,” Nguyen reported.

The three were responsible to train staff from the Ministry of Immigration and Population, analyze data, and write thematic reports. Neupert led two areas of reporting on mortality and maternal mortality; Guest led the reporting on migration and urbanization; and Nguyen led the reporting on disability.

Since his graduation, Nguyen has been a postdoctoral fellow at the Asian MetaCentre for Population and Sustainable Development Analysis under the National University of Singapore and has worked for the Institute of Sociology under the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences. He is a founding member of Vietnam’s Institute of Population, Health, and Development and has been the Institute’s Deputy Director since 2009. Currently, Nguyen is based in Perth (Australia), working for Curtin University as a co-principle investigator on a project on disability-inclusive development in Laos.

Neupert has spent much of his professional life as a technical adviser on population-related projects for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), focusing mainly on census analyses, population projections, and demographic training. He has taught and researched at the Australian National University, the National University of Honduras, the Federal University of Minas Gerais, and at the UN's Demographic Centre in Cairo.

Guest has been working primarily in Thailand since he graduated. He has taught at Mahidol University in Bangkok and served as director of the Thailand Office of the Population Council. He also spent several years at the Population Division in New York. Though now retired, he occasionally undertakes consulting work such as the Myanmar census project.

“The PSTC gave me in-depth training on the tools and concepts of demography,” Guest said. “I have used these in all my work since I left the PSTC.”