2015 AAAS Annual Meeting (12-16 February 2015)

February 12 - 16, 2015

Citizen Science: Advancing Innovations for Science, Information, and Engagement

Citizen science is now an established practice for scientific research and public engagement. However, the field is still maturing and ripe with innovation in areas such as image analysis, gaming, do-it-yourself science, large-scale data collection, visualizations, communications, and applications in public health, disaster response, and conservation. Moreover, the ability to engage directly with the public in research is changing the way we think about information -- how we gather and work with it, who has access to and ownership of it, and how to collaborate to address social and scientific problems. A two-day pre-conference event at the 2015 AAAS Annual Meeting will gather practitioners from across scientific disciplines and from around the world to share innovations in citizen science practice and theory. The event also marks the first meeting of the Citizen Science Association, a new organization that unites and serves this rapidly growing community of practice. In this session, representatives of the Citizen Science Association and architects of the field of citizen science will share major themes from the citizen science pre-conference, highlight exciting innovations that have impacts across disciplines, and provide a vision for citizen science as a growing field of research and practice.