Raising awareness on Citizen Science: paving the way for future research projects
The main goal of Citizen Science is to engage citizens in a new, active and democratic manner. Citizen Science projects can arise from the citizens themselves, although in most cases, they are researcher-driven or emerge through a process of co-creation between scientists and citizens. Through TIME4CS, Vita-Salute San Raffaele University (UniSR) is supporting sustainable institutional changes to promote Citizen Science in science and technology. Over the last months, UniSR has implemented several initiatives to achieve this result.
First, elements of Citizen Science have been included in UniSR’ training programs and courses, to educate emerging scientists with a view of citizen engagement in science. These initiatives are mainly targeted to Ph.D. students, pre-graduate biotechnology students, and participants of the advanced master in science and health communication.
UniSR also organized a cycle of seminars entitled “Science and Society”, for students, researchers, and physicians: on October 12th 2022 UniSR hosted Paola Zaratin, scientific director of AISM, the Italian Association for Multiple Sclerosis, and Federica Molinari, Patient Engagement Manager of FISM, the Italian Foundation for Multiple Sclerosis, with a talk entitled “The science of participation. A common system between research and treatment: science with, and of the person”, on the genesis of the European Project MULTI-ACT, an excellent example of participatory science focusing on patient experience of illness, transforming the patient into a co-researcher.
On November 9th 2022 Sabine Oertelt-Prigione, from the Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen, Netherlands, gave the talk "Which role can sex and gender play in biomedical research?" on the relevance of gender medicine, i.e. the study of how biological differences (based on sex) and socio-economic and cultural differences (based on gender) influence people's health.
Last but not least, in September 2022 UniSR launched a monthly newsletter, entitled “Bits of Citizen Science”, dedicated to San Raffaele researchers and administrative personnel. Five issues of “Bits of Citizen Science”, have been produced so far, introducing key concepts of Citizen Science, presenting the first and the second “Science and Society” seminars, promoting online events on Citizen Science, and discussing the role of Citizen Science as a groundbreaking research methodology.
In the near future, the UniSR team plans to provide researchers with examples of Citizen Science projects in the biomedical sciences that may be of particular interest to the researcher community, including basic research approaches, which are traditionally the least likely to engage in Citizen Science. With TIME4CS UniSR wishes to contribute to a cultural change that involves its researchers, its students, and citizens at large.
Author: Maya Fedeli, PhD (UniSR)
