Puneet Kollipara is a data scientist, geospatial/GIS programmer and science/environmental writer who's passionate about wrangling and distilling the complexity behind some of society’s greatest challenges, from climate change to democracy reform. Most recently, he served as a Data Science Fellow at the Center for New Data, where he used geospatial data science and data visualization for efforts to understand socioeconomic and demographic disparities in Americans' barriers to voting. He also recently assisted with database management and data quality for the U.S. Vote Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that provides election- and voting-related information and services to American voters.

Previously, he was a writer and journalist who specialized in science, science policy, environmental issues, climate change, energy, public health, politics and the intersection of these issues. He regularly contributed to Science magazine and to The Washington Post's Wonkblog and environment/energy section, and curated Wonkbook, the morning public-policy newsletter of Wonkblog.

Puneet also served as Associate Editor for Inside EPA‘s Risk Policy Report, a weekly publication centering on the U.S. EPA’s approach to determining environmental risks to human health and ecosystems. His work took a deep dive into the administrative procedures, policy analyses, scientific innovations, judicial/legislative action and political wrangling that contributed to EPA's risk assessments for industrial chemicals, pesticides, drinking-water contaminants, air pollution and climate-warming greenhouse-gas emissions. As a Washington, DC-based energy reporter for Houston Chronicle and other Hearst Newspapers, he closely covered the Keystone XL pipeline controversy, oil-and-gas drilling, air-pollution regulations, renewable energy and energy economics.

His work has appeared in dozens of daily newspapers and in various digital outlets, print periodicals and wire services, including Bloomberg News, Science News, Chemical & Engineering News, Scientific American, Eos and Undark Magazine. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Washington University in St. Louis in physics and economics.