Citizen Science
About
Citizen science, also referred to as participatory science, is a collaborative approach to scientific research where non-professional scientists contribute to scientific projects. This involvement can range from collecting and analyzing data to observing and reporting on various phenomena. Citizen science helps expand research capabilities, increase public engagement with science, and often leads to valuable data collection that might not be feasible with traditional research methods alone.
The Space Open Life Science Team for International Collaborative Exploration (SOLSTICE) project is part of OSDR’s citizen science initiative. Navigate to the SOLSTICE project page to learn more!
Space Open Life Science Team for International Collaborative Exploration (SOLSTICE)
Overview
The spaceflight environment causes significant changes to the structure and function of the cardiovascular system, including fluid redistribution, alterations in blood pressure, and changes in cardiac output. The goal of the SOLSTICE project is to quantitatively summarize the data on the effects of actual or simulated microgravity and radiation exposure resulting from spaceflight on the cardiovascular system through an open citizen science approach. Additionally, this program was designed to reach students and young people that are underrepresented in STEM, to include women, minorities, individuals of disadvantaged backgrounds, etc. Initially, a group of investigators, through a collaboration with the Ames Life Science Data Archive (ALSDA) Analysis Working Group at NASA developed a list of relevant cardiovascular search terms. Based on these search terms, medical librarians generated and executed the search strategy in Medline, CINAHL, Embase and NASA repositories. In parallel, students and young professionals from various space industry-affiliated organizations were invited to join this pilot project, resulting in the addition of ~100 individuals. These individuals completed a virtual training course on the nature and methodologies of the project and were then structured into teams with more senior individuals designated as team leaders. Currently, the teams are screening approximately 15,000 studies using the systematic review tool, Covidence. Teams will be extracting and curating data for meta-analysis of the cardiovascular spaceflight literature, but also extracting, submitting, and curating appropriate datasets into the new Open Science Data Repository (OSDR). This effort will result in collaborative publications based upon the literature meta-analyses, and a number of publicly accessible datasets for reuse, modeling, machine learning, and knowledge graph-type approaches.
Contact
Please contact Svetlana Komarova (svetlana.komarova@mcgill.ca), Sunny Narayanan (anarayan09@gmail.com), or Ryan Scott (ryan.t.scott@nasa.gov) if you are interested in learning more about the project or joining the team.
Current SOLSTICE Members
| Name | Affiliation |
|---|---|
| Alan Hargens | |
| Ashley Nemec-Bakk | Univ of Arkansas for Medical Sciences |
| Ben Levine | Univ Texas SW Medical |
| Bettina Willie | McGill University |
| Dawn Bowles | Duke University |
| Jacqueline Barbera-Mirza | bowles lab |
| Jay Buckey | Dartmouth School of Medicine |
| Katherine Baxter | University of Strathclyde |
| Laurence Vico | Jean Monnet University |
| Marjan Boerma | Univ of Arkansas for Medical Sciences |
| Martin Morris | McGill University |
| Mattias Neset | McGill University |
| Michael Delp | Florida State University |
| Mimi Lan | Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth |
| Nathaniel Szewczyk | University of Ohio |
| Russell Turner | Oregon State Univeristy |
| Ryan Scott | KBR/NASA/ALSDA AWG Chair |
| Saachi Sharma | bowles lab |
| Saswati Das | ABVIMS & DRRMLH , IP University, New Delhi |
| Sunny Narayanan | Florida State University |
| Susan Bloomfield | Texas A&M |
| Sutharzan Sreeskandarajan | University of Michigan |
| Svetlana Komarova | McGill University |
| Thomas Diaz | bowles lab |
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