I spoke at the White House today. I never expected to say that!Today, the White House honored twelve people across the country that they considered to be "Champions Of Change" in Citizen Science. I was one of the twelve who were nominated and then selected. I do feel quite honored. I was asked to write a few words on my thoughts about citizen science for the White House blog – here's what I had to say.I was also so pleased to have an entourage of friends and family who came to see me speak at the White House. I specifically invited two of my girl friends to join me, as they are very much my own personal champions of change in citizen science: Yasaman Sheri and Lisa Ballard. Yasaman is an industrial designer turned biohacker who experiments with making synthetic skins out of kombucha cultures. Lisa is a developer at the SETI Institute who works on making planetary data from space probes more easily accessible and she works with me on Spacehack.org in her spare time. Both are awesome women that I highly recommend.
My citizen science A-team: Eri Gentry (who was also honored by the White House), Yasaman Sheri, myself and Lisa Ballard