Sam Pathak ’23
Politics
Understanding Size, Scale and Diversity of Nonconventional Farms in Minnesota
Certificate(s): Journalism
I worked on a project to understand the size and diversity of small farms across the United States that sell directly to consumers through farmers’ markets and programs such as community supported agriculture. I focused on farms that were registered with Minnesota Grown, a program that connects consumers to local producers. I updated the information in the lab’s records of all the farms registered with Minnesota Grown, and obtained data of total acreage and produce acreage from about 50 farms in Minnesota using remote sensing applications. This internship was incredibly productive and fruitful, despite the challenges of working remotely. I learned valuable data collection, management and conversion skills, and a lot about parcel boundary and geospatial data and analytical tools such as QGIS and ArcGIS. Furthermore, the work that I did opened my eyes to the potency and scope of research that can be carried out using geospatial data, and I look forward to continuing and building on my work next year as well.
2020
Urban Systems and Planning for a Sustainable Future
Sustainable Urban Infrastructure Systems Lab, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Princeton University
Anu Ramaswami, Sanjay Swani ’87 Professor of India Studies, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the High Meadows Environmental Institute; Dana Boyer, Research and Development Manager, High Meadows Environmental Institute; Graham Ambrose, Research Project Specialist, Civil and Environmental Engineering; Kirti Das, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Civil and Environmental Engineering