Cell phones + user-generated data = citizen science on steroids

Sameer Yousuf left a comment to an article I wrote for Science Progress titled “Harnessing the Power of Citizen Scientists.” Yousuf alerted me to a project at UCLA known as Participatory Sensing (video above). Fascinating combination of cell phones and citizen scientists to do everything from helping joggers chart healthy running courses, to alerting scientists and policy makers to needed environmental policy changes. UCLA is also in the early stages of creating a related project titled “Networked Naturalists.” I’m excited to learn more about this one because Michael and I are working on something along these lines but not focused on the use of cell phones. Stay tuned!