Lucy Fortson and Laura Trouille for the Zooniverse Team

Impact Innovations Award

University of Minnesota

Zooniverse is the world’s largest platform for online citizen science, with nearly three million registered participants and over 500 projects to date. With the partnership of a large, engaged crowd, Zooniverse dramatically accelerates the pace of research across STEM and the humanities. In addition, projects benefit from massive, distributed human insight that can enhance, verify, and train computational methods. Projects on Zooniverse have yielded hundreds of publications, new scientific frameworks, and improved datasets adopted by federal agencies and scientific communities worldwide. I believe we won the ARIS Award because Zooniverse authentically combines public participation in science with advances in research. By inviting the public to participate directly in research while fostering dialogue through open forums, Zooniverse builds trust, strengthens scientific literacy, and cultivates communities of learning.

I am a co-founder of the Zooniverse citizen science platform, and the PI of Zooniverse efforts at the University of Minnesota. Since 2010, I’ve been a Professor in the School of Physics & Astronomy at UMN where I carry out research on galaxy evolution often through the Galaxy Zoo project — the project that led to the development of Zooniverse. At UMN, I also lead efforts to develop strategies to combine the strengths of both human and machine intelligence to tackle big data challenges in scientific research. I have a BA from Smith College in Physics and Astronomy, and a PhD from UCLA in particle physics. My post-doc work at the University of Chicago focused on astroparticle physics. I fortunately obtained one of the first joint positions between U of Chicago where I continued research, and the Adler Planetarium where I developed programs for public participation in research. In 2008, as Adler VP for Research, I joined forces with Galaxy Zoo founder Chris Lintott to launch Zooniverse.

Dr. Laura Trouille is joining me in receiving the award as the overall PI of the Zooniverse. Dr. Trouille is currently Vice President of Science Engagement at the Adler Planetarium where, in addition to overseeing the Zooniverse teams from Adler, UMN and Oxford, she provides leadership for the Astronomy Department and the Adler’s Youth Engagement team. These initiatives include high-altitude ballooning, underwater meteorite recovery, astronomy research, science communication, and participation in the teen leadership council. Dr. Trouille obtained a BA in Physics from Dartmouth College and a PhD in Astronomy from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She was appointed a CIERA post-doctoral fellow in astronomy at Northwestern University before taking a joint appointment with the Adler as an Astronomer.

Both Lucy Fortson and Laura Trouille are representing the full Zooniverse team of more than 20 members including software engineers, designer, researchers, data scientists, educators, communication leads and project managers.