White House Open Forum on Citizen Science and Crowdsourcing Live Webcast

The White House is hosting a live webcast forum on citizen science and crowdsourcing. 

Only a small fraction of Americans are formally trained as “scientists.” But that doesn’t mean that only a small fraction of Americans can participate in scientific discovery and innovation. Citizen science and crowdsourcing are approaches that educate, engage, and empower the public to apply their curiosity and talents to a wide range of real-world problems. To raise awareness of these tools and encourage more Americans to take advantage of them, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Domestic Policy Council will host “Open Science and Innovation: Of the People, By the People, For the People,” a live-webcast forum, on Wednesday, September 30th.

The forum will bring together citizen-science professionals, researchers, and stakeholders from local, state, Federal, and Tribal governments, as well as representatives of the academic, non-profits, and private sector to celebrate the contributions of crowdsourcing and citizen science to enhancing agencies’ missions, and scientific and societal outcomes. A smaller workshop later in the afternoon will also provide an opportunity for cross-sector discussions to spur bigger, better, and bolder citizen-science and crowdsourcing utilization across a number of important challenges, such as the preservation of pollinators, monitoring drought conditions, recovering from coastal flooding, and low-cost health instrumentation.