People-Powered Research, Education, and Outreach through Zooniverse

The Zooniverse has grown over the years into the worlds largest platform for people-powered research (also known as online citizen science) with over 2 million participants worldwide, hundreds of projects, and over 350 peer-reviewed publications (see zooniverse.org/publications). Through our DIY Project Builder Platform (zooniverse.org/lab), anyone can build their own crowdsourced research project for free, from tagging animals in wildlife images, discovering new exoplanets, transcribing historical handwritten documents, marking cells for cancer research, and much more. The Zooniverse is one example among hundreds of citizen science opportunities to engage the public in meaningful ways in real research. Many are designed to have a low barrier to entry so that anyone can participate (e.g., Zooniverse projects dont require any specialized expertise) and everyone can connect directly with professional researchers (e.g., each Zooniverse project has a dedicated discussion forum). They also often hold opportunities for advanced students and lifelong learners to engage more deeply. For example, in addition to the PlanetHunters.org main task of looking for dips in light curves, participants can also engage in an advanced task of vetting exoplanet candidates by examining publicly accessible data in the MAST archive, etc. Participants are encouraged to connect with the Planet Hunters researchers both through the projects discussion forum and through their weekly Coffee Chat YouTube program (https://www.planethunters.coffee/). In this talk I will demonstrate Zooniverses tools and capabilities, share a few of the publics exciting research discoveries and impacts, and briefly showcase Zooniverses use in formal and informal education settings (from kindergarten classrooms to Geo101 to museum settings). The talk will close with the open questions and new opportunities citizen science faces and the unique solutions Zooniverse is exploring.