This is a post by Mateus Winelmann. See Mateus’ bio at the bottom.

We often hear about major scientific discoveries in the media, like how scientists at CERN found the Higgs Boson or that a lifesaving drug like Harvoni, which can cure hepatitis C, is going to market. These are amazing breakthroughs, but oftentimes the process of discovery feels like something far removed from us. After all, most of us don’t have the training or resources to work on these kinds of projects. When cutting edge scientific research often requires years of specialized education and billions of dollars in funding (finding the Higgs Boson is estimated to have cost over US$13 billion), it doesn’t seem like something ordinary people can be a part of. That doesn’t have to be the case though! Citizen science consists of research done largely by the general public, typically without any significant cost for participants, and it can be incredibly valuable. To illustrate that, let’s talk about eBird.

eBird was launched in 2002 by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society, where the idea is to allow people to document their bird sightings. Bird watchers already tend to keep records of the birds they see or hear, and eBird allows them to make those observations available to educators and researchers across the world. Making that data available is already bearing fruit, with ornithologists at Cornell publishing a paper last year discussing the migratory strategies of birds, which is discussed in a New York Times article. The paper’s authors were able to document how different species of birds from different parts of the country migrate in different ways thanks to eBird. According to one of the paper’s articles, it would have cost researchers millions of dollars to collect this data through traditional tracking methods, and even then, the data would not have been as detailed.

You can learn more about eBird and how to contribute here. If you are interested in finding other citizen science projects, take a look at NatureNet and SciStarter. If you’re feeling particularly ambitious, you can consider starting your own citizen science project. There are several tools and frameworks out there that can help you create and share a citizen science project, some of which are described here, and a few others I would suggest looking at are CitSci, crowdcrafting, Zooniverse, and iNaturalist. Starting your own project can be an ambitious undertaking, so I’d recommend taking the time to explore what projects are already out there to get an idea about how you might create your own project. While this page is directed at educators, it highlights a few important things to consider if you decide to create your own project. There is no shortage of things to be studied, so it’s just a matter of finding, or starting, a project that interests you.

Mateus Winelmann is a senior undergraduate student at Vanderbilt University. The opinions expressed herein are Mateus’s and not necessarily those of Cornell University. You can reach Mateus at mateus.winkelmann@vanderbilt.edu.