Do a Science Yourself!

If you’ve come here from the Dragoncon Science Track Science Fair/Power Hour, welcome! I’m glad you followed me here for some more science.

If you came from elsewhere, welcome also! This page is an extension of a hands-on science experience at Dragoncon in September 2026.

Science that anyone can get involved in goes by many names. Citizen science. Participatory science. Community science.

Although “citizen science” is historically more well known, there are good reasons to ditch that terminology. Community science is favored in some cases, and participatory science by others. Re-branding is hard, so I may still use all three terms with an emphasis on the latter two.

Whatever it’s called, it puts scientific inquiry back into the hands of people with a passion, love, or interest in science and its outcomes.

Resources

• Don’t know where to begin? SciStarter has a huge collection of projects that range from minimal to significant engagement.
• NASA keeps a list of active projects under their umbrella, including the one I work for, Radio JOVE!
• World Mappers is a set of projects run out of CosmoQuest, which is also home to a space science community dedicated to doing and learning science. Those of you who’ve known me a long time know that’s where I got my start in this field!
• Zooniverse is the home of many online projects that you can contribute to in your free time from a range of fields in science and beyond.
• Citizenscience.eu is a multi-lingual entryway into a host of projects in the European Union.

Work in progress! More to come…