The Technion Citizen Science (CS) Research Center

Ze’ev Hochberg MD PhDTechnion’s Faculty of Medicine

The Audubon Society's Christmas Bird Count

• The 19th century Christmas "side hunts“ – count the birds you kill on Xmas eve.

• 1900: the U.S. ornithologist Frank Chapman proposed counting birds on Christmas instead of killing them. 27 observers took part in 25 circles.

• The 113th bird count, winter 2013–2014: 71,531 volunteer in 2,369 circles in Western Hemisphere. Counts can be held on any day from Dec 14 - Jan 5. At least 10 volunteers perform in each "count circle" with a diameter of 15 miles. Participation is open to all, and is free.

Methodological problems: • Not all circles are even in size.• Not every bird along the route is seen or identified. • Big flocks can't be counted precisely. • Many birds are counted twice.

Crowd/Citizen Science

• Scientific research conducted in whole or in part by amateur or nonprofessional scientists; crowd sourcing.

• ‘Citizen Science Central’, (Cornell Lab of Ornithology): ‘Projects in which volunteers partner with scientists to answer real-world questions’ -

EU-Citclops project (2012) of water bodies: Water color, transparency and fluorescence indicate phytoplankton, sediments, and organic matter in the water.

The American Association of Variable Star Observers – since 1911

Can I use the paradigm in anthropometry?

The mission: to enable anyone, anywhere, to participate in scientific discovery through variable star astronomy. We accomplish our mission by carrying out the following activities:· observation and analysis of variable stars.· Collecting and archiving observations for worldwide access.· Forging collaborations of amateur and professional astronomers

Promoting scientific research, education, and public outreach to variable star data.

Anthropometry

• Define study groups.

• Cohorts of ~1-5,000 newborns

• Periodic examination by nurses, developmental pediatricians and social scientist.

• Data analysis by statisticians

• Conclusions by the study designers

• Data owned by investigators

• Bias in definition

• Conclusions limited to 1-5000 children

• Expensive and geography-limited

• Designed for small cohorts

• Slow, biased and mostly late

• But funded by public moneyParadigm shifts: Paradigm shifts:

Citizen as research partnersCitizen as research partnersFrom samples to populationsFrom samples to populations

Data belong to the public Data belong to the public

I want to know about all the children Everywhere Pay less

Measuring children is Simple Relatively accurate Continuous scales of• measures • age

CS: Classified by the amount and quality of the public contribution

•Who leads the project? – scientists– local communities - the AIDS activists

•The platform– internet-based – real-life interaction

•Purpose? – science – public engagement.

Contributory projects - designed by scientists, with participants involved primarily in collecting samples and recording data.

Collaborative projects - the public is also involved in analyzing data, refining project design, and disseminating findings.

Co-created projects - designed by scientists and volunteers working together; some public participants involved in all aspects of the work.

??Reach the public

WWW, social networks, blogs

Schools

Educate children and the general public to scientific thinking.

Children are the fastest adopting community of digital technology (mobile devices, apps, digital gaming, social networks)

– Promote cooperation of scientists with high-school students from different communities, denominations and sectors in one country, as well as among students from different countries worldwide.

Me too: Investigators who expressed interest

• Child growth and maturation.

• Monitoring air and water quality.

• Child development.

• Asthma.

• Sleep.

• Childhood obesity.

• Science and math education.

• Language comprehension

SystemsBiology

Network, Pathways, Biomarkers, Drug Targets

Genomics Transcriptomics

+

Proteomics

+ +

Metabolomics

Child growth

Air and water quality

Sleep Math education

Network – unexpected junctions

100(0)TCSP

Fishing expeditionHypothesis generating research

??

Big Data – A Network Approach

PubMed articles re: “Citizen Science”

Google trends 6/11/14

Why Crowd Science ? Why now?

Whereas the traditional approach to research resided in ivory towers of the academia, innovation is abound in the industrial sector, public sectors and the general public.

The technology for big data is now reasonably mature.

The lay public is also mature: the WWW, social networks.

Cornell Technion Applied Sciences and Engineering school The Technion Guangdong Institute of Technology (TGIT)

Scientists and educators - Least mature, conservative, networking

The Web Cloud cost-efficient and flexible

The CrowdTask

Result

Result

Cloud Vs. Crowd

Integrated Crowd - Cloud Web

WWWResearch

Life in the cloud - advantageous over the isolated alternative

•Easier to lock down information if it's administered by a third party rather than in-house•Easier to enforce security via contracts with online services providers than via internal controls

“Security”? “The big-brother”?•Computer and network intrusions or attacks•Availability of data•Assurances that a cloud provider is faithfully running a hosted application •The legal implications of data and applications being held by a third party •Lack of control and transparency when a third party holds the data.

Citizen Research: Ethical concerns??

• Privacy• Anonymity• Consent• IRB approvals• Do we use citizen scientists for our research?• Update the citizen scientists of results and conclusions.• Citizen with no access to the net• Misuse of results by interest groups, industry, intelligence agencies• Hostile partners• Cyber attacks• Monetizing by applications such as advertising. (Google cloud infrastructure collects and

analyzes consumer data for its advertising network.) • Who owns the data?• Who? How select projects? participants?• Authorship of reports CS Ethical Committee

Assignment: write an ethical code for a new discipline

The Technion Citizen Science Research Center

Cloud solution: a multi-channel platform to process automatically many research projects, large amounts of data, and formulate sensible outcome.

A wide definition of the partnership: professional scientists, educators, social innovators, citizen scientists and school-children, the industry, social scientists, policy-makers.

Platform as open source : open for all (the ‘Crowd’); enables any type of credible research – full transparency of projects and data.

Make it easy to develop CS projects, submit observations, analyse them and visualize the results.

Advanced visualization, gaming and modelling techniques.

Integrate social networking and collaboration tools.

Machine-learning as core element of the platform.

The EcosystemData entry

Web applicationMobile applications : iOS, Android Smart Girds, sensors Games Applications Future application & devices

Create interest User Interactive application Multiple languages  

Analysis tools

Real time feedback

Data Validation

Other Information Sources to be integrated

I  

Universities, agencies, weather, genes

databases, epidemiology etc.

Scientific articles and papers

Maps, aerial and satellites images

Open Public information (T.V, white papers,

blogs, newspapers, etc)

Organization Reports ( UN-, WHO reports)

Local organizations

The Scientific Method – a paradigm shift

18

Concept Pilot and validation

Full scale deployment

Analysis Conclusions & reporting

Idea

Engage the crowd in any step of the processCrowd to contribute mass of data

Support the new discoveries Validate new ideas and research

A Technology Challenge• User Centric - Fun and advanced tools

– Adaptable to users age and capabilities– Extendible to future devices– Sustainable over years– Interactive, gaming, real-time personalization– Machine learning– Provision of immediate feedback

• Data Collection– Automated tools -easy to support multiple devices, sensors, and sources (text, audio, video…) – Easily connect new sources storing data in streaming mode or periodically– Easy to add ontologies for new research topicsand data sources

Industry Partners

•Cisco•EMC•IBM•Intel•Oracle•SAP

CS: Command and Control

• While open, free and transparent, the platform remains under ‘command and control’.

• Research project to be scrutinized by a (voluntary) board for integrity, sample size, ethics, methods conformity.

• ?Public (Wikipedia) / ?Peer review (academia)

• A uniform platform that handles all input data – users to play by rules: Interoperability and agility

• A new paradigm: establish key performance indicators (KPI)

Three legs of the WWWResearch

Scientific Challenge

Educational Challenge

Technical Challenge

Educational aspects School children + general public partner with the scientists to construct research tools, collect

data, and upload them into a designated online platform.

The amateur citizen scientist/school child receives: I. educational material on a scientific issue II. Discussion with the principle investigator on research methodologyIII. immediate feedback on the data they input about themselves, their family members, their neighbors, their

friends and their environment.

Citizen partners see the data, and can take part in processing and conclusions.

Guidance by science teachers.

Projects to be dispersed by social networks and the education system; integrated into the matriculation as field research.

– Israeli school children and parents of children– Extended nationwide for the entire population to join. – Translated into international languages and used across the globe.

Criteria for pilot projects

• Applications by academic faculty from research universities• Scientific excellence and innovation.• Importance for participating CS and to society• CS selection/engagement methods, phases of the research in which the

crowd will be involved. • Channels of communication with the crowd (social networks, blog,

webpage)• Dissemination of results: informing/educating/reporting the results back

to the peoples group and the general public. • Procedures/phases of transparency - general access to the data• Ethical and legal issues, privacy issues.• Feasibility to complete the pilot within 12 months.

Will the crowd join?

• Social movements: “efforts by a large number of people to solve collectively a problem that they feel they have in common”

• Based on fundamental principle of voluntary contributions made as part of a collective effort.

• A function of the expected costs and benefits from participation. • Since the goals of such movements often benefit members of the public regardless

of whether they participated in the collective action, the achievement of the goal may be insufficient as a motivating force in and of itself.

Motives associated with the importance attributed • collective goals.• the reactions of friends, family or colleagues.• potential benefits to be gained,

reputation, making new friends.

CS as a social movement