Puneet Kollipara
Puneet Kollipara is a climate/geospatial data scientist and outreach/communications specialist in Washington, DC. Leveraging open source, open data and open science, he helps clients find, analyze, provide, translate and integrate data for the benefit of people and the planet.
He works with Fulton Ring and the Public Environmental Data Partners on HIFLD Next. This community-shaped geospatial data hub preserves and improves data layers from HIFLD Open, a public-facing federal aggregator of infrastructure datasets shut down in 2025.
To support open ecosystems, Puneet mentors aspiring technologists and contributes to open-source projects via communities like the Upskilling Labs and Civic Tech DC. He also helps plan open-source gatherings like FedGeoDay and FOSS4G North America. He joined the SciPy Conference Hybrid Committee in 2026.
Previously a science, environmental and public-policy journalist and blogger, Puneet holds a bachelor’s degree in physics and economics from Washington University in St. Louis, MO.
Session
The scientific Python community, like the rest of the world, faces a set of interlocking crises. Longstanding questions over how to sustainably develop, fund and maintain open-source scientific software, open data, reproducible research and collaborative training are being magnified by a variety of forces from the AI boom, to government disinvestment, to economic disruption. Combining a short panel with audience discussion and Q&A, this virtual BoF will reflect on these challenges and crowdsource ideas for how the SciPy community (including future conferences) can serve as a vehicle for bolstering scientific open ecosystems.
This is a virtual Birds of a Feather section. It will take place on the virtual platform for the conference, Airmeet. All attendees will have access to Airmeet. NOTE: This session will observe Chatham House rules.
Hybrid committee co-chairs Puneet Kollipara and David Nicholson will host and moderate this panel discussion.