Welcome to the new and improved Science for Citizens…now known as SciStarter!
The upgrade was designed to make it easier for you to find, learn about, and get involved in citizen science projects of interest to you. Now, you can search by topic (birds, astronomy, etc) or by activity (while at the beach, on a hike, etc). We’ve also made it simpler for researchers and project organizers to add their projects to our robust Project Finder.
Please take some time to click around the site, and let us know what you think. What do you like? What improvements would you like to see? We’ve built this with you in mind, so your feedback is very helpful. Feel free to leave a comment, below, or email us at info@scistarter.com.
This weekend, SciStarter is featured on the popular Forbes site, Techonomy: Revolutions in Progress. Here’s an excerpt from that story:
When an earthquake shook the mid-Atlantic states this summer, the US Geological Survey got help gauging the accuracy of its seismographic equipment from Science For Citizens users who Tweeted details about their location and the impact they felt. University of Waterloo researchers have also relied on Science for Citizens for help calibrating weather-reading instruments by comparing satellite-based estimates to the site’s users’ measurements of actual snowfall where they live. And scientists at the Paleontological Research Institution who recovered a mastodon fossil from Hyde Park, NY, a decade ago are still learning about Pleistocene ecology from Science for Citizen volunteers who have been sifting through the 22 tons of matrix that was excavated there.
SciStarter.com, a new and improved iteration of Science for Citizens that launched this week, is designed to facilitate more of this kind of crowdsourced science by matching citizen scientists with research projects that need their help. Whether it’s collecting volcanic ash, tracking diabetic health, or taking microbial samples from their water heater tanks, SciStarter volunteers will find hundreds of opportunities to contribute to science in their spare time. Researchers can tap the resources of the growing citizen science community by posting projects there.
The only website of its kind, SciStarter could also prove useful in emergency response and public health crises. Founder Darlene Cavalier says the site is already equipped to respond to pop-up crises and pandemics, with projects such as SafeCast—the radiation detection and reporting system enacted recently in Japan—ready to go in the SciStarter database.
We encourage you to read the full post here.
Thank you for choosing to be part of our growing community. Keep experimenting!
-The SciStarter Team