Open Knowledge Nepal is delighted to announce the first batch of Open Data Women Fellow 2019. We were really pleased to receive a large number of applications and selecting only 10 fellows from the pool of deserving candidates was very challenging. We believe the enthusiasm & knowledge of selected fellow will help open data community of Nepal to grow and would like to congratulate and wish all fellows the very best for their fellowship!

Starting from mid April, the fellow with visit host organization for the training and in May they will be placed for the project based internship to enhance their data, communication and technological skills.

 

Fellows

Amrita Acharya

Amrita Acharya is a student of Human Biology who recently graduated from Kathmandu University. She was involved in several field and lab – based researches during her undergraduate study. Her research has recently been published in Journal of Nepal Medical Association (JNMC). While working on academic and extracurricular projects, she has developed research expertise, leadership qualities, teamwork, and communication skills. She is a humble and hardworking person who has a keen interest in learning and is enthusiastic to face new challenges in her life.

Ankita Karki

Ankita Karki is a graduate of Environment Science from Khwopa College. She conducted her research on “Air pollution tolerance indices of plants in Kathmandu valley” with the intention of studying plants role in improving the quality of air in the valley. She is an enthusiastic and highly motivated person with a keen interest in data driven research. She acquires great set of presentation skills including knowledge on range of modern technologies like MS-Office, GIS. Her ambition is to become one of the shapers of society striving towards creating a sustainable environment. She hopes to engage in projects that can help her develop ability and expertise needed to retrieve and visualize the available data in Nepal to help construct plausible solutions to address the existing environmental issues effectively. She also aspires to emerge as a social entrepreneur working towards building a plastic free and pollution free world in the future.

Anupama Bishwokarma

Anupama Bishwokarma is in her final year of Bachelor’s in Public Health at CiST College, affiliated to Pokhara University. So far, she has been organizing a community named R Ladies Kathmandu, a part of R Ladies Global, which is a worldwide community to promote gender diversity in R community by creating safe spaces for gender minorities to learn the R programming language. With an avid interest in women’s health, she has been actively working through Cysters Nepal, an independently working group, to conduct sessions at local level to aware people about Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, one of the threats to women reproductive health. It is a fact that data now has more potential in shaping health of the public than ever, which is why she has been seeking for every big or small opportunity to learn more about open data, programming language, data analysis and research.

Bidhya Rimal

Bidhya Rimal is a computer science, spiritual science and social science enthusiast. She says: “Like most people, I pretend to know what I am doing but most of the time, like everyone else, I am just googling trying to find the answers.” Besides being a geek who just finished her bachelor’s in computer science and Information technology, and like most undergrads who keep posting pictures their cats on Instagram, she sometimes posts those of her dog’s as well. When she is not doing that, she is found involved in various social organizations to conduct social services in her free time. When she looks at the future in the long run, she would like to work in the field of ICT policy in Nepal.

Pragya Pradhan

Pragya Pradhan began her career in digital marketing after graduating in Business Information System. Currently, she is a freelance SEO consultant and a novice Data Analyst. She enjoys helping businesses grow their audience and get more online traffic. Since she enjoyed playing with data inside Google Analytics, she decided to make a shift to the world of data. She began learning about data science, following data enthusiasts on Twitter and listening to their podcasts. She started with small steps and by now has taught herself a fair bit of R, SQL, and Tableau. When she’s not researching about data science, she likes experimenting in her kitchen. She also loves traveling and hiking.

Rojika Maharjan

Rojika Maharjan graduated with bachelor’s in Social Work from St. Xavier’s College, Nepal in 2015. She has worked in various social service settings; especially in the sector of children, schools and mental health. Then, she went on to pursue a graduate degree in Social Work with families and children, which was a scholarship program run by a consortium of four universities; University Institute of Lisbon, University of Stavanger, University of Gothenburg and Makerere University. Her graduate experience made her very close to research and data, and she was able to publish a master’s thesis on integration of young nepalese immigrants living in Portugal. This also gave her an opportunity to look into various open data accesses, and learn more about data retrievals and reproduction. After coming back to her home country, she now seeks to explore more into research in the context of Nepal, and gain more experience and knowledge on working with data.

Sonika Baniya

Sonika Baniya is a senior undergraduate computer engineering student at Kathmandu Engineering College. During her sophomore year, she started programming with Python Django and worked in E-note project. Wanting to try something different, where a web developer part of her still remained, she started programming in Nodejs and mongodb. In her senior years, she got more exposure to data science stuffs through her academics as well as mini projects. During her participation on codecamp, she taught herself to use few libraries of python for data visualization such as numpy and pandas. She has developed  a strong interest in data science in very short period and will always have room for further new things. She is also a WLiT (Women Leaders in Technology) fellow of the batch 2018/19.

Srijana Raut

Srijana Raut is a final year undergraduate student of Bsc CSIT, interested in the program development field. She is also learning machine learning, and she codes on Python. She is a determined learner willing to contribute in the field of AI and solve real world problems. She is well-versed in technology and writing code to create systems that are reliable and user friendly. She likes to call herself a confident communicator, strategic thinker, and innovative creator to develop software that is customized to meet a company’s organizational needs, highlight their core competencies, and further their success.

Usha Shrestha

Usha Shrestha is a student of Patan Multiple Campus studying B.Sc. CSIT. She is an enthusiastic learner and passionate about technology. She is an adherent believer of hard work. She wants to pursue a career in the technology research field. She can be found enjoying any kind of books from chick lit to biographies and enjoys binge watching crime shows. She lives in Chakupat, Lalitpur.

Subha Laxmi Maharjan

Subha Laxmi Maharjan is a student pursuing her Bachelor’s degree in BSc CSIT at Kathmandu BernHardt College. She is currently the Joint Treasurer of CSIT Association of Nepal and fellow at Women Leaders in Technology (WLiT). She is passionate about exploring and experimenting with new technologies.

 

Acknowledgment

We would like to specially thank Women Leaders in Technology (WLiT) and Women LEAD Nepal for helping us with the selection and our partner organization Accountability Lab, Bikash Udyami, Clean Up Nepal, Foundation For Development Management, Freedom Forum, Institute for Integrated Development Studies, Kathmandu Living Labs, NAXA, YoungInnovations and YUWA.