Citizen Science Workshop 2012

Citizen Science Workshop
Jan 23-24, 2012
UC Davis, CA

Summary

The goal of this workshop, organized and hosted by microBEnet, was to bring together people involved in citizen science, with a particular focus on microbiology.  The first day was given over to presentations (available on SlideShare), and the second day consisted of discussions on a variety of topics ranging from informed consent to sampling kit design.

Presentations:

The conference opened with a talk by Darlene Cavalier, a.k.a. the Science Cheerleader, who gave an introduction about citizen science.  She also highlighted a number of important web resources, including scistarter.com and citsci.org.  Slides here.

Noah Fierer gave a talk about some results from the Wildlife of Your Home project, in particular the distribution of bacteria in a few pilot kitchens.  Slides here.

Holly Menninger followed up with a presentation on the outreach associated with the Wildlife of Your Home project, including the importance of assessing outreach and of having a compelling narrative. Slides here.

Chris House spoke about his thermophiles in water heaters sampling project, in particular the rationale and development of the project. Slides here.

Madhusudan Katti gave a talk about the Fresno Bird Count which he organizes.  Particular highlights included the importance of a rigorous sampling protocol and taking into account socioeconomic drivers of biological diversity in urban areas. Slides here.

Josh Neufeld spoke about his citizen science project which collected aquarium filters from hobbyists and analyzed them for bacteria and archea that play important roles in the nitrogen cycle in this environment. Slides here.

Tom Bruns talked about the ongoing Mycoblitz project where volunteers enter the field to collect and categorize mushrooms. Slides here.

Patrik D’haeseleer introduced Biocurious which is a large do-it-yourself (DIY) bio project located in San Francisco and the possible overlap between DIY bio and citizen science. Slides here.

Dan Smith discussed the Home Microbiome Project which will focus on how the microbiome of a house changes when new occupants move in. Slides here.

Jason Bobe finished off the talks for the day with an introduction to the Bioweathermap project, as well as a mention of the Personal Genomes Project. Slides here.

Discussions

A number of very fruitful and productive discussions occurred on the second day.  The topics, as well as some questions to stimulate discussion are collected here.  The topics included:

Privacy/Ethics/Informed Consent
Standardized Sampling and Sampling Kit Design
Feedback/Visualizations
Outreach
Funding