Astronomy Colloquium Speaker Calendar

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Astronomy Colloquium - "The Universe and the Zooniverse: Exploring the Cosmos with Millions of Citizen Scientists"

Event Type
Seminar/Symposium
Sponsor
Department of Astronomy
Location
Astronmy 134
Date
Feb 11, 2020   3:45 pm  
Speaker
Cliff Johnson, CIERA and Zooniverse Postdoctoral Fellow Northwestern University and Adler Planetarium
Contact
Rebecca Bare
E-Mail
rsbare@illinois.edu
Phone
265-8226
Views
26

Beginning with the Galaxy Zoo project in 2007, the Zooniverse citizen science platform has grown into the world's largest platform for online citizen science, having launched more than 200+ projects that span a wide range to range of fields that include astronomy, ecology, medicine, and more.  This work, leading to numerous publications across a range of scientific fields, is made possible by a community of 2 million volunteer citizen scientists.  

The Zooniverse has been very successful in helping researchers cope with analysis bottlenecks and unlock their data, but its crowd of volunteers will increasing struggle to keep up with the ever-increasing data volumes.  In addition to highlighting some of the exciting (and surprising) discoveries the public has made through Zooniverse over the past decade, Dr. Johnson will discuss future directions for the Zooniverse that leverage hybrid human + machine classification techniques.  What role can citizen science play in the future of scientific discovery?  How do we balance creating the most efficient human-machine systems while at the same time accommodating human motivation and trust?  How can we take full advantage of this excellent opportunity for public engagement and learning?

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