Egle Marija Ramanauskaite presenting citizen science in life science research, and its relevance to professional researchers, at Vita Scientia 2016 conference.

1. UNREALIZED POTENTIAL OF CITIZEN SCIENCE
IN EUROPE: OPPORTUNITIES IN LIFE SCIENCE
RESEARCH
EGLĖ MARIJA RAMANAUSKAITĖ, MSc
Vilnius University, Citizen Cyberlab, Human Computation Institute
VITA SCIENTIA 2016, VILNIUS

2. CITIZEN SCIENCE – real scientific research done by or together with
non-scientists
• Popular in the English-speaking world, esp. US
• Europe catching up …
• Mostly biodiversity, but others popping up

3. CITIZEN SCIENTISTS:
×ARE NOT cheap labor!
 Enjoy learning about science
 Appreciate a fun way to spend time
 See the Big Picture & want to contribute to science!

4. HOW:
• volunteer
computing
Rosetta@home

5. • volunteer thinking
Cell Slider
(Cancer Research UK)

6. • volunteer gaming
EyeWire
FoldIt
Phylo

7. • volunteer sensing

8. WHY DOES CITIZEN SCIENCE MATTER?
Q1. Can you… be in a lot of places at once?

9. CITIZEN SCIENTISTS can
Charlop-Powers, Z. et al. (2015). Global biogeographic sampling of bacterial secondary metabolism. eLife, 4, e05048.

10. Q2. Can you… trick time to squeeze in ALL THAT DATA??
Q3. Or have a free-to-use supercomputer right in your lab???

11. CITIZEN SCIENTISTS will help you (if you ask kindly)

15. IS CITIZEN SCIENCE RELIABLE?
YES:
• 1 trained researcher = 23 citizen scientists
• Thousands of volunteers do this
• Usually one task / puzzle / experiment is given to
several citizen scientists
CITIZEN SCIENTISTS:
 Have skills unmatched by any computer
 Have “microexpertise” that makes a powerful team
 Are quick to learn
 Think outside the box!! Not noise… whole new type of
galaxy!

16. CITIZEN SCIENTISTS CAN:
 Achieve breakthroughs
 Publish papers
 Help solve the world’s most pressing problems, like climate change,
Alzheimer’s, cancer…
Follett R, Strezov V (2015) An Analysis of Citizen Science Based Research:
Usage and Publication Patterns. PLoS ONE 10(11): e0143687.

17. SETTING UP A CITIZEN SCIENCE PROJECT IS NOT ROCKET SCIENCE 

18. SO… IN A *RARE* EVENT THAT YOU CANNOT BEND THE RULES OF
SPACE AND TIME…
DON’T DO THIS:
…

19. SO… IN A *RARE* EVENT THAT YOU CANNOT BEND THE RULES OF
SPACE AND TIME…
DO THIS:

20. THANKS !!!
Special thanks to:
Pietro Michelucci, Human Computation institute; Francois
Grey, Citizen Cyberlab team, and all of the Citizen
Cyberlab project collaborators at UNIGE, CERN,
UNITAR, UPD, UCL, Imperial College London and The
Mobile Collective.
AND ALL THE CITIZEN SCIENTISTS OUT
THERE!