The Geneva Challenge 2018

Jessica Arnold is currently pursuing her Master of International Affairs degree at Columbia University, with a concentration in International Security Policy and specialization in United Nations Studies. Prior to graduate school, Jessica served in the African Affairs Directorate at the National Security Council at the White House, and helped coordinate U.S. Foreign Policy decisions with respect so sub-Saharan Africa. She has significant regional expertise in sub-Saharan Africa in regions including West, East, and the Horn, particularly related to national and international security dilemmas. Jessica is from Michigan, United States.

Alonso Flores is currently attending Columbia University for his Master of Public Administration degree, with a concentration in Economic and Political Development. Alonso worked as a Strategic Planning Advisor to the Resident Coordinator of the United Nations in Peru. He has five years of experience in strategy management, high-level political dialogue and technical advisory for sustainable development. Alonso has a proven track record and skills in promoting cross-sector partnerships among governments, multilateral organizations, private sector and civil society to advance the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Alonso is from Peru.

Nigora Isamiddinova is currently pursuing her Master of Public Administration in Development Practice degree with a specialization in Advanced Economic Analysis at Columbia University. Prior to graduate school, Nigora worked as a project manager and process engineer in the USA and France in the pharmaceutical industry, where she designed industrial manufacturing processes and oversaw the implementation phase of the projects. Nigora brings project management and process design skills as well as systems thinking approach to the team. She spent the summer of 2018 working in Dakar, Senegal, on facilitating access to finance using remote sensing technology for smallholder farmers. Nigora is from Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

Nitasha Nair is currently pursuing her Master of Public Administration degree at Columbia University, with a concentration in Energy and Environment. Prior to joining Columbia, Nitasha worked as a Senior Communications Officer for International Water Management Institute (CGIAR). Nitasha brings over 8 years of experience in environment policy and management, research, marketing and Information Technology. She has worked with a diverse range of organizations from an international not-for-profit research organization, a government agency and a global technology firm. Nitasha is from Kerala, India.

Ji Qi is currently attending Columbia University for his Master of Public Administration in Development Practice degree. Previously, Ji was a Senior Investment Officer at the Asian Development Bank working with public and private companies on financing energy, water, municipal waste, and other environmental infrastructures. He brings significant skills in project and corporate finance, project planning, budgeting and financial management. Ji is from Beijing, China.

Dinesh Acharya is an M.Sc. student in Computational Science and Engineering at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zürich) with specialization in Robotics. He completed his undergraduate studies from Jacobs University Bremen, Germany in mathematics. He is interested in machine learning methods such as modeling and representation learning from spatio-temporal data. Dinesh has experience in working with generative models for videos and strongly believes that technological innovations should be leveraged to attain sustainable development.

Prabhat Joshi completed his Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Engineering from Kathmandu University (Nepal) in 2015. After two years of work experience, he started his Master’s Degree in Environmental Engineering at ETH Zürich in 2017. He is specializing in Urban Water Management and is focusing his research on urban hydrology and drainage systems. Prabhat wants to bring low impact development (LID) strategies into the mainstream of urban drainage planning. He is also interested in investigating the impacts of climate change on drainage systems, and understanding how sudden and gradual increases in water flow affect the performance of the systems.

Paribesh Pradhan has an M.Sc. in Physical Geography with a minor in Glaciology from the University of Zürich, Switzerland. He is presently pursuing a Master of Advanced Studies in Sustainable Water Resources at ETH Zürich. Paribesh has significant work experience in climate change adaptation and sustainable mountain development projects, having worked with the United Nations Environment Programme – Regional Resource Center for Asia Pacific (Thailand), International Center for Integrated Mountain Development (Nepal), and the Mountain Forum Secretariat (Peru). In 2012, he trekked from the east to west of the Nepal Himalayas to document the impact of climate change on mountain communities, and in 2016 he was part of the Antarctic Circumnavigation Expedition − Leg 0 organized by the Swiss Polar Institute.

Sara Olguin Flores, is an architect, graduated from the Juan Misael Saracho Autonomous University (U.A.J.M.S. - Tarija) in Bolivia. She is studying the specialization of landscape design and planning at the University of Buenos Aires (U.B.A.), in Argentina. Currently, she is working on architecture projects linked to the landscape and as a volunteer in social work related to the improvement of living spaces. Nature, landscape and ecology are her main interest in research and work.

Julieta Sicardi is a passionate about ecology, recycling and sustainability. She raises awareness among her family, friends and takes care every day of reducing her ecological footprint. She gradueted as architect from FADU, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and is currently specializing in landscape planning in a postgraduate degree. She worked as technical assistant in the General Directorate of historical heritage at the Ministry of Culture and now in the Secretary of National transportation planning.

Laura Yamakoshi is an architect from the University of Buenos Aires. She is pursuing a postgraduate specialisation degree in Landscape Design. She currently works at an architectural firm developing residential projects in Buenos Aires. She has lived and worked in Argentina and Japan. Laura is passionate about nature and the development of a sustainable habitat, and she seeks to incorporate those issues to all aspects of her practice. She is involved, as part of her postgraduate thesis, in an ongoing project about the relationship between educational game activities and sustainable habitat in impoverished neighbourhoods in Buenos Aires.