Future of Science: in the hands of Citizens?

With the Create Lab’s Venture Catalyst Challenge ads plastered all around campus, those of us who aren’t that interested in entrepreneurship and/or are more academically-oriented might feel a little left out. But while the research model (and wizened scientists in general) might appear to stick with what works and not necessarily engage with the latest and coolest of technology, there is actually a surprising amount of progress and innovation beneath the surface.

The most important development over the past few years is arguably the rise of citizen science. While businesses and high school students jump abroad the Internet train to post Instagram snaps and tweets in dogged bids for attention and popularity, scientists globally are taking advantage of the hyper-connected nature of today’s world to create new models which allow for easier communication of scientific ideas, and inspire people to take an active role in research projects which may have profound results.

Zooniverse is perhaps the biggest citizen science initiative across Europe today. Started by academics from the University of Oxford and the Adler Planetarium, it allows anyone anywhere to participate in research projects with nothing more than a computer and an Internet connection. Those of you who are fans of Prof. Brian Cox might know Zooniverse from the BBC’s Stargazing Live show, which had featured Zooniverse’s project on discovering exoplanets around foreign stars. And for those of you who frequent London Tube stations or are interested in cancer research, then you may know the Cancer Research UK-Zooniverse partnership which allows the public to analyze cancer patient data en masse.

It may seem like such initiatives are merely for those with a lot of time on their hands (during lectures, for instance?), but they have incredible potential to make change. Science communication, in particular, benefits massively from citizen science initiatives. By letting people get their hands dirty and actually be part of science, they can have a personal understanding of topics that they’re involved in, and shrink the divide between scientists-atop-ivory-towers and the rest of civilization. The range of projects and areas being offered by projects like Zooniverse, which ranges from physics to zoology and medicine, also allows prospective scientists and science students to explore their interests and inspires them to pursue higher education in those areas. With astonishing statistics of educational levels & literacy across London boroughs, as shown by the Schools Plus programme, even a little push could mean a lot.

But if the opportunity of translating whale songs on Zooniverse doesn’t satisfy your appetite for ‘hard science’ (what sort of person are you???), then projects like CitizenScienceLab and the European Citizen Science Association might interest you. Both are initiatives with Imperial involvement, and deal with super-serious science projects like using crowd-sourced efforts to assist in particle physics discoveries and developing new organic parts through synthetic biology. A number of their projects are still in infancy, presenting plentiful room for you to be involved in future science.

But citizen science isn’t all about science; for those of you involved with International Development, then UNITAR-UNOSTAT’s ‘Disaster Mapping’ is worth a look at. As the project’s profile on CitizenScienceLab states, “an expert on the Nubian people of Sudan can look at a photograph of a location experiencing famine and immediately determine specific details such as the clan or sub-clan of people depicted…and perhaps minute details such as adequacy of firewood stocks or potential crop yields.” By using the Internet to bring together people who can give input, information on the regions affected can be quickly collated to help with relief efforts. The Internet suddenly is an extremely powerful tool which can save countless lives.

As citizen science’s momentum continues to grow, it’ll be interesting to see whether more of science research will permeate into our daily lives. In the meantime, projects are already up and running, so let’s go exploring!

If you are interested to find out more about Zooniverse and citizen science in general, and how such projects could engineer social and educational change, then be sure to attend Imperial Hub’s THE Series: Citizen science in future research and science education on Thursday, 23/1. The talk lasts for only 1 hour and is FREE. Prior registration required at hubseries.eventbrite.com.