Citizen Science Day 2019 (#CitSciDay2019) results prove that all of us can make huge contributions to research.
Citizen Science Day is an annual celebration presented by SciStarter and the Citizen Science Association in an effort to connect people to real research in need of their help. It taps the curiosity and observations of people to contribute to significant scientific research efforts.
This year, the featured event of #CitSciDay2019 was the StallCatchers #Megathon, a gamified method of identifying stalls in blood flow in the brain, which is believed to contribute to Alzheimer’s. Because of the participation of citizens around the world, over the course of a single weekend, citizen scientists accomplished 2,566 research hours, or 3.5 months of lab-equivalent research time. The StallCatchers team reported that preliminary research results indicate “high blood pressure is associated with an increased rate of stalls in mice, and much more so in mice that have been engineered to get Alzheimer’s disease.” They will continue to explore and verify this finding, which is just an early glimpse of the ultimate research result.
In the months leading up to the Megathon, SciStarter and partners, including the Human Computation Institute, Arizona State University’s School for the Future of Innovation in Society (ASU SFIS), the National Network of Libraries of Medicine Pacific Southwest Region, and the Citizen Science Association, hosted weekly calls to engage librarians and event organizers and activate libraries as hubs for citizen science. SciStarter and ASU provided Citizen Science Day resources on the SciStarter website, including the Librarian’s Guide to Citizen Science, bookmarks, posters, press releases, a social media tool-kit, and more.
The Megathon headquarters was the Microsoft Campus in Redmond, Washington, and many other meet-ups tuned into a livestream. Nearly 1,000 SciStarter members earned their Citizen Science Day certificates over the course of the weekend by contributing to different citizen science projects!
Before and after Citizen Science Day, the global community shared its enthusiasm for citizen science on social media. SciStarter created a recap video of some of these posts.
“This is the first year we’ve organized collective impact around one activity on Citizen Science Day and we are so thrilled with the outcome,” said Darlene Cavalier, Founder of SciStarter and a Professor of Practice at SFIS at Arizona State University. “With a growing list of partners and supporters, we look forward to supporting more libraries, museums, communities and individuals during next year’s Citizen Science Day!”
About Citizen Science Day
Now in its 5th year, Citizen Science Day is an annual celebration of all things citizen science, presented by SciStarter and the Citizen Science Association, a professional organization that unites expertise from educators, scientists, data managers, and others to power citizen science.
SciStarter.org is the place to find, join, and contribute to science by providing people access to more than 3,000 searchable formal and informal research projects and events. SciStarter also offers a coordinated place to record contributions and access the tools and instruments needed to participate in citizen science projects. SciStarter is a research affiliate of the School for the Future of Innovation in Society at Arizona State University
