Crowd Funding

The Human Microbiome Project and other microbiome projects worldwide have laid an important foundation for understanding the trillions of microbes that inhabits each of our bodies. However, opportunities for the public to get involved in such research has been limited. Now, American Gut gives you an opportunity to participate and to compare the microbes in your gut to those in the guts of thousands of other people in the US and elsewhere. American Gut is a project built on open-source, open-access principles. Our data are for the good of understanding and will be shared both with participants and with other scientists.

Spectral Challenge is a call to makers, hackers, and Do-It-Yourselfers worldwide to tackle real-world environmental problems with low-cost, open source spectrometry.

What if there were an affordable device you could build yourself, take into your neighborhood and use to test for heavy metals, oil contamination, or other toxics, without needing to have a PhD or access to a lab?

There are two parts to the Spectral Challenge, Stage 1: Collaboration and Stage 2: Real World Use.

Stage 1 will be awarded to the team which publishes techniques and/or documentation which most dramatically improves the process of open source spectroscopy for the whole community. Stage 1 is open now; all entries must be posted on the Public Lab site by May 31, 2013. The winning team will receive $1000 from the prize pool.

The goal of Stage 2 is to use low cost open source spectral analysis to identify an environmental contaminant such as petroleum or heavy metals. Stage 2 will start on June 5, 2013; the winner of Stage 2 will take 80% of the prize pool -- 20% will go to Public Lab to continue organizing and promoting open source science.

Spectral Challenge 2013 is like an X Prize for DIY science, but it's crowdfunded -- this means that if you really believe in the goals of the Challenge, you should back them by donating to the prize pool! You can also help by getting the word out to find pool contributions!

We are a group of scientists interested in exploring the potential applications of Ecuador’s unique biodiversity. As a first step, we are working to assemble and apply gene libraries collected from around the country.
You can join field trips in Ecuador to collect samples, work in a lab extracting and sequencing nucleic acids, or from home assembling and curating the electronic database.

uBiome is the world's first effort to map the human microbiome through citizen science.

What's the microbiome? The microbiome are the bacteria that live on and within us. It sounds kind of funny, but all of us are actually covered in helpful germs. Many conditions – from diabetes to depression, asthma to autism -- have been found to relate to the microbiome.

uBiome brings this cutting edge technology directly to consumers for the first time. The more data we collect, the more we can learn about this important area of research. We've been featured so far in Wired, Venture Beat, the Los Angeles Times, Scientific American, BoingBoing, and more.

In the wake of Superstorm (hurricane) Sandy, many thousands of people are affected by flood waters which brought sediment (mud, sand, and dirt) into homes and businesses. We are interested in learning what chemicals may be present in this sediment and in the flood waters, and we need your help! We are asking people who are recovering from Sandy to collect samples and send them to us so that we can analyze them.

The U.S. Geological Survey is asking volunteers to help map man-made structures and facilities, such as schools and fire stations, in the state of Colorado then, in a few months, the United State. Using an internet mapping application, volunteers can help the USGS update The National Map by correcting or adding information about structures nearby.

"Correctly locating and identifying fire stations, police stations, schools, and hospitals not only makes USGS maps more useful, but can literally save a life," said USGS Director Marcia McNutt.

Petridish allows citizens to support science by directly funding independent and small -scale research projects. While this is a somewhat non-traditional citizen science project, funding is an important part of science, and Petridish allows science lovers everywhere to truly make a difference and support innovative science.

Similar to other crowd funding style websites, Petridish lets you browse projects and donate online to the research projects of your choice. Each project has a variety of donation levels with enticing rewards for each level. Typical rewards included souvenirs from the field, acknowledgement in journal articles, chances to join researchers in the field, dinner with a famous researcher, and even naming rights to new species!

You can explore projects by both research subject and reward type. After you donate, share your involvement and information about the project through Facebook and Twitter and help projects gain momentum and reach their goals.