Julio Fernando Salas is a Chancellor’s Fellow and second-year PhD student in the department. Centering immigrant families, his research interests lie at the nexus of immigration, culture, emotion, race & ethnicity, inequality, and health. He is interested in the most intimate aspects of immigrant family life and how members navigate society's, their family's, and their own ambivalence across social positions such as race and ethnicity, class, age and generation, and family structure.

I’m the son and grandson of Mexican and Colombian immigrants who immigrated to New York City in the mid-to-late 1980s from Puebla, Mexico, and Bogotá, Colombia. My three younger siblings and I were all born at Elmhurst Hospital and raised in Corona, Queens, New York, and I could have never imagined getting this far. I am forever indebted to those who played and continue to play a role in me getting to where I am, and I try really hard to repay them with how I live and conduct my life and work.

I got my degrees at Queensborough Community College and Cornell University, and my personality and essence from Queens.