InSPIRES connects with Citizen Science H2020-SwafS project REINFORCE
With the firm belief that public engagement needs no borders, our Science Shop project proudly address its community to introduce the Citizen Science project REINFORCE. After a glance at the project’s intense scientific and communication activity during its first months of work, it is possible to declare, as we have done in the past, that public engagement is a flexible root that bridges different communities of practice of the Science with and for Society (SwafS) knowledge base below separation lines.
Research Infrastructures FOR Citizens in Europe (REINFORCE) aims to engage and support citizens to cooperate with researchers and actively contribute in the development of new knowledge for the needs of science and society. The project is inviting citizens to contribute to online frontier science by using real and simulated data for analysis, taking advantage of simple affordable detectors and instrumentation to measure properties of objects such as cosmic rays.
REINFORCE has decided to use Zooniverse, described as the world’s largest platform for online citizen science, to build its infrastructure and engage with community. Zooniverse was created following the paradigm of Galaxy Zoo, a project that asked citizens to participate in data analysis by classifying galaxies’ images (+460.000.000 classifications so far by +1.900.000 registered volunteers).
Sharing another principle that InSPIRES subscribes to, REINFORCE wants to work with underrepresented groups, such as elder people and people with visual impairments, by providing them with tools (sonification of data for visually impaired people, virtual training workshops for people of rural areas, specialized ICT training workshops for senior citizens) and training to overcome specific barriers. The project also committees to the gender dimension of science by equally recognizing the impact of male and female role models in the development of frontier science.
Please connect to www.reinforceeu.eu in order to know more about the research domains in which the project will foster citizens engagement: Gravitational Wave Astronomy, Neutrino Astronomy, High Energy Physics, and Cosmic Ray Physics.
REINFORCE Partners
EGO (FR/IT/NL), the coordinator of the project, is engaged in the Gravity Spy citizen Science Project through the VIRGO collaboration. The project capitalizes from the experience in frontier citizen science of the University of Oxford (UK) and the Open University (UK), from the contribution in the introduction of RRI in frontier science by EA (GR) and ZSI (AT), from participatory design for online frontier science education developed by IASA (GR) and EA (GR), from the solid tradition in the experimental physics of University of Pisa (IT), from the research activities in the fields of nuclear physics, particle and astroparticle physics carried by CNRS (FR) and the efforts made by CONICET (ARG) to achieve better and multisensorial access to the astronomical data. The partners Lisbon Council (BE) and TRUST-IT Services (ITA) are responsible for the Awareness-Raising and Communication tasks to maximize visibility of project’s objectives, achievements and results.
REINFORCE first webinar
Here you can obtain complete information about this webinar that aims at introducing REINFORCE project to the European Research community and to the broad public of potential citizen scientists. As main takeaway messages, the webinar offers:
a) Understanding what is the potential of citizen science for society
b) Discovering the benefits of integrating citizens input in frontier Physics research
c) Keeping abreast with the research work carried out within Large Research Infrastructure
Previous