The Future of Citizen Science

#sxsw #ubiomesxsw

Did you want to be a scientist when you grew up? Think you'll never get a chance to be a part of exciting discoveries in science?

Citizen science allows all of us -- even those who are not "official" scientists -- to be involved in moving the frontier of human knowledge forward. Until now, citizen science has mostly consisted of data collection, not hypothesis generation.
uBiome is a citizen science startup that sequences the human microbiome. We are the largest successful citizen science crowdfunding campaign in history (over $350,000) We aim to revolutionize science by allowing the public to participate in asking and answering questions around the microbiome (the trillions of bacteria that live on and inside of all of us).

How can the average person get involved in citizen science and what is the future of science in an age of crowdsourcing, instant communication, and the rise of the pro-amateur?

We'd like to share the future of citizen science with you at SXSW.

Presenters

Jessica Richman

CEO

uBiome

Jessica Richman started and sold her first company after high school. At Stanford University she earned degrees in economics and interdisciplinary engineering. Along the way, she worked for Google, McKinsey, Lehman Brothers, the Grameen Bank, and top-tier Silicon Valley venture firms. Jessica arrived at Oxford University as a Clarendon Scholar and completed an MSc at the Oxford Internet Institute. She is currently a DPhil student at Oxford with a focus on innovation, social networks, and collective intelligence.

Jessica is a co-founder of uBiome, the world's largest crowdfunded citizen science startup. uBiome has been featured in Wired, MIT Technology Review, Scientific American, NPR, FoxNews, ABC News, and dozens of other media outlets. She has spoken at TEDMED, SciFoo, Oxford University, and many other conferences and universities.