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Federal Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science (FedCCS) Community of Practice

FedCCS June 2020 Meeting
"NOAA Citizen Science on Data Quality" and "EteRNA OpenVaccine for COVID-19"

Thursday, June 25, 2020 at 2:00 – 4:00 PM Eastern Time

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT MEETING
JOIN FedCCS Listserv for Meeting Invites by emailing: FCPCCS-subscribe-request@listserv.gsa.gov


FedCCS Meetings are typically every last Thursday of the month. We are shifting the time to start at the top of the hour at 2:00 - 4:00 PM Eastern with the last 30 minutes available for informal virtual networking. The FedCCS June 2020 Meeting will include a presentation from Laura Oremland on citizen science data quality from NOAA Case Studies and from Do Soon Kim on the EteERNA OpenVaccine COVID-19 Challenge.

Laura Oremland (NOAA Citizen Science Co-Coordinator) will provide an overview of NOAA’s citizen science programs, describe the data quality assurance and quality control processes applied to different programs, and summarize common themes and recommendations for collecting high quality citizen science data.   

Do Soon Kim (visiting researcher at Stanford University) will talk about the Eterna OpenVaccine Challenge for COVID-19 and how they are harnessing online gamers to develop mRNA vaccines stable enough to be deployed to everyone in the world and not just a privileged few.

Agenda (Times in Eastern Time Zone)

2:00 - 2:10 PM  FedCCS Introductions, New Members and Team Site - Participate in Menti Poll (View Menti Poll Results)

2:10 - 2:40 PM  Laura Oremland - “Can We Trust the Power of the Crowd?  A Look at Citizen Science Data Quality from NOAA Case Studies”

2:40 - 3:10 PM  Do Soon Kim - “Eterna OpenVaccine: Stabilizing mRNA Vaccines for COVID-19 through Crowdsourcing”

3:10 - 3:30 PM  Open Forum: Agency Updates and FedCCS Member Lightning Talks

3:30 - 4:00 PM  Informal Virtual Networking

Video Available to FedCCS Members in
FedCCS Community Team Space

Stream is Only accessible to DOI Employees

FedCCS June 2020 Talk Abstracts, Speaker Bios, and Resources

Can We Trust the Power of the Crowd?
A Look at Citizen Science Data Quality from NOAA Case Studies

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has a rich history in citizen science dating back hundreds of years. Today NOAA’s citizen science covers a wide range of topics such as weather, oceans, and fisheries with volunteers contributing over 500,000 hours annually to these projects. The data are used to enhance NOAA’s science and monitoring programs. But how do we know we can trust these volunteer-based efforts to provide data that reflect the high standards of NOAA’s scientific enterprise? This talk will provide an overview of NOAA’s citizen science programs, describe the data quality assurance and quality control processes applied to different programs, and summarize common themes and recommendations for collecting high quality citizen science data.   

Laura Oremland serves as one of NOAA's Citizen Science Co-Coordinators. She has been with NOAA since 2002 and resides in the NOAA Fisheries Office of Science and Technology in Silver Spring, MD where she also manages education programs and works in science communications. She has a BS in mathematics from the University of Kentucky and an MS in marine science from SUNY Stony Brook.

Resources:



Eterna OpenVaccine:
Stabilizing mRNA Vaccines for COVID-19 through Crowdsourcing

Eterna (@EternaGame) is a browser-based "game with a purpose" developed by scientists at Carnegie Mellon University and Stanford University with funding support from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Players solve puzzles related to the folding of RNA molecules and can also suggest new puzzles. Similar to Foldit—created by some of the same researchers that developed Eterna—the puzzles take advantage of human problem-solving capabilities to solve puzzles that are computationally laborious for current computer models. The researchers hope to capitalize on "crowdsourcing" and the collective intelligence of EteRNA players to answer fundamental questions about RNA folding mechanics. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Eterna project is looking to harness online gamers toward a solution. The mission is to develop mRNA vaccines stable enough to be deployed to everyone in the world and not just a privileged few. COVID-19 has highlighted the need for widely deployable, equitable vaccines. Although mRNA vaccine feature unique advantage compared to traditional vaccine modalities, there are critical roadblocks that must be addressed before it can be deployed widely. Eterna launched the OpenVaccine challenge to mobilize the citizen science community to help navigate this difficult scientific challenge through gamifying one of the toughest challenges in RNA biochemistry: sequence-structure prediction. This talk will describe Eterna's current effort to design a more stable mRNA vaccine against COVID-19.

Do Soon Kim is currently a visiting researcher in the laboratory of Professor Rhiju Das at Stanford University working on the OpenVaccine project. He is pursuing his PhD at Northwestern University in chemical engineering studying synthetic biology, and first got involved with Eterna from his interest in biomolecule design.

Resources:



The Federal Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science (FedCCS) Community of Practice works across the government to share lessons learned and develop best practices for designing, implementing, and evaluating crowdsourcing and citizen science initiatives. The FedCCS is a grassroots community open to all federal practitioners working on, funding, or just interested in learning more about crowdsourcing and citizen science. We seek to expand and improve the U.S. government’s use of crowdsourcing, citizen science, and similar public participation techniques for the purpose of enhancing agency mission, scientific, and societal outcomes. FedCCS Community Meetings are every Last Thursday of the month at 2:00 - 4:00 PM Eastern Time. For more information, check out the FedCCS 2-Page Overview, FedCCS File Sharing Trello Site (contains past FedCCS Meeting Notes and other resources), and visit CitizenScience.gov

FedCCS Community Listserv Info

JOIN the FedCCS Listserv (Only Federal Employees) by sending an email to: FCPCCS-subscribe-request@listserv.gsa.gov

POST to FedCCS Listserv by sending an email to: FCPCCS@listserv.gsa.gov

FedCCS Community Team Site (Code: m3375mh)

For non-DOI employees, send an email with subject line “Join FedCCS Team Site” to the following emails:
     sophialiu@usgs.gov and openinnovation@usgs.gov






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