Meet the Student Interns Contributing to a More Sustainable Columbia

Columbia students support critical sustainability work, applying what they are mastering in their course of study to on-campus operations. Meet this year's interns who are helping to drive work in partnership with the Office of Sustainability.

Julia Widmann

Julia is working in support of university-wide sustainable transportation, waste, and water projects while pursuing a Master of Science in Sustainability Management (SUMA).

Most recently, Julia worked as the Sustainability Operations Manager at the Javits Center in New York City, where she launched and managed their rooftop farm program, built food rescue and surplus item donation programs, and analyzed building-wide sustainability metrics. Previously, she worked at clean water advocacy organization Waterkeeper Alliance in NYC, at the Climate Museum in NYC, and on an organic farm in Hana, Hawaii. Julia earned a Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Policy from Washington University in St. Louis in 2018.

Julia hopes to advance her portfolio of sustainability skills through coursework in greenhouse gas accounting and life cycle analyses, while diving deeper into her areas of interest, including sustainable agriculture and corporate accountability. She lives in Brooklyn and spends her free time at city parks and beaches, enjoying live music and comedy, and attending New York Liberty games.

Mina Petracca

Mina is currently pursuing a Masters in Climate and Society at the Columbia Climate School. In her capacity as the Campus as Living Lab intern, she will explore how community engagement in sustainability projects can help Columbia accomplish its Plan 2030 goals.

Mina has been a passionate defender of environment and climate for many years with interests in strategic climate communications, nature-based solutions, food systems and more. She holds a BA in Environmental Analysis from Pitzer College, where she conducted research on international carbon markets and nature-based carbon dioxide removal.  

Mina's previous professional experience includes environmental education, science communication and outreach, ecological fieldwork, agriculture and aquaculture, and GIS. She came to Columbia to deepen her knowledge of the systemic dimensions of climate issues and strengthen her ability to influence climate-change decision-making on a larger systems-wide scale.

A fun fact about Mina: she's a huge nerd about ecology and natural history—she'd love to hear about your favorite ecosystem or species!

Vanshika Kishore

Vanshika is pursuing a Master’s in Applied Mathematics at Columbia's Graduate School of Engineering, with a focus on Data Science. Through her coursework, like Applied Machine Learning and Statistical Inference, she is learning to work with data and build predictive models. This has taught her how to understand data patterns, make informed decisions using statistics, and apply algorithms to solve real-world problems.

In her role with the Office of Sustainability, she analyzes campus food procurement data for Columbia’s participation in NYC's Plant-Powered Carbon Challenge. Vanshika built a food categorization tool to organize the food purchase data efficiently to calculate emissions. This allows her to identify trends and present insights to the Dining team.

She previously worked as a Data Analyst at EV Bazaar Technologies Pvt Ltd. Her job was to analyze customer data using computer languages Python and SQL to help the company understand its customers better. By structuring and interpreting the data, she was able to provide insights that helped the team offer more personalized services, which improved customer satisfaction and boosted sales.

Vanshika is from New Delhi, India, where she earned a Bachelor’s in Mathematics and began hery journey into data science. Outside of work, she enjoys cooking healthy meals, experimenting with traditional recipes to make them more nutritious and sustainable.

Yoon Kim

Yoon is a senior at Columbia College studying sustainable development and computer science.

She is working as a data intern with the Sustainability team, streamlining data collecting processes to calculate greenhouse gas emissions and other sustainability-related metrics. She also supports the communication of data-driven insights to various audiences for initiatives driving forward the work as part of Plan 2030.

Yoon has also served as a legal intern at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law and as a research assistant at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

Originally from Seoul, South Korea, here on campus, Yoon is a member of the women's rugby team and also serves as a resident advisor.