Unlocking Data through Zooniverse: Science with 1.7 Million Volunteers

Processing our increasingly large datasets poses a bottleneck for producing real scientific outcomes and citizen science - engaging the public in research - provides a solution, particularly when coupled with automated machine learning efforts. Zooniverse.org is the world's largest platform for online citizen science, partnering with hundreds of researchers and engaging more than 1.7 million people around the world in over 80 active projects; tagging animals in wildlife images, identifying new exoplanets, transcribing artist's notebooks, detecting gamma rays, tracking resistance to antibiotics, and much more. In this talk I will share a few of the exciting discoveries and highlights from how Zooniverse has helped transform the way we do research and engage the public in science, including in both formal and informal education settings. The talk will close with the open questions and new opportunities citizen science faces and the unique solutions Zooniverse is exploring.