This is a quick post to introduce a project I have been developing over the past year and a half, called the Pittsburgh Water Microbiome (PWM) Project. I am aware of some other similar citizen science projects out there, so the goal of this post is to receive some feedback and advice, and open this …
A couple of weeks ago in San Jose was the inaugural meeting of the Citizen Science Association, “Citizen Science 2015“. I previously posted my thoughts on day one here at microBEnet. On day 2, Holly Menninger, Jenna Lang, and I organized a session entitled “Citizen Microbiology: Engaging the public in the study of invisible life”. …
I’m currently attending the inaugural conference of the Citizen Science Association… “Citizen Science 2015“. Over 650 participants from around the world have arrived in San Jose to talk about all the various flavors and implications of citizen science. It’s been a fascinating conference so far, not least because there’s very little agreement on what the …
Well, this is very very interesting: Request for Information (RFI): Ecology Meets Genomics – Federal Business Opportunities: Opportunities. IARPA – the equivalent of DARPA for the intelligence agencies – is getting into microbial biogeography (for forensic purposes). They are seeking comments on the general topic. From the call: We hypothesize that by correlating the genetic information …
I’m working on a manuscript describing the different and particular challenges scientists in various disciplines face when incorporating citizen science into their research. So, I thought I would go looking for other articles about it, and found one with the promising title A new dawn for citizen science by Jonathan Silvertown. I’m holed up in …
In Dirty Dog: Do Pets Track Bacteria in Your Home? on the Popular Science blog, science journalist Brooke Borel describes her recent experience contributing to the citizen science experiment called The Wild Life of Our Homes run by Rob Dunn and Holly Menninger at North Carolina State University. Here she presents a beautiful graphic depicting how the samples that …
Imagine you have a camera with a special “anti-macro” lens. This lens scrubs from any image all plants and animals and other “macro” organisms. And this lens also highlights the remaining living things – the microorganisms – anywhere in the frame (including those that were in or on the macro organisms removed from the image). …
Im a graduate student in Jonathan Eisen’s lab and had a chance to attend this year’s installment of the ASM general meeting was in Denver last month. Among the hustle and bustle of a slew of talks at the ASM-2013, I got a chance to attend the Citizen Microbiology of Built Environment session sponsored by Sloan …
At microBEnet we’ve had a long standing interest in citizen science in microbiology (and are finally doing some ourselves). If you’re interested in the idea of citizen science, check out this webinar on how to recruit citizens scientists.
This is going to rock. Citizen microbiology – highlighted at the American Society for Microbiology Annual Meeting in Denver in May. The details on the session are below. Sunday May 19 at the American Society for Microbiology General Meeting in Denver. If you are interested in attending Register here. If you work on some aspect of …