ASM to hold meeting on 'citizen microbiology'

Citizen science involves people participating in both scientific thinking and data collection. One of several citizen science bodies around the world, the UK-EOF, describes the activity as:

“Volunteer collection of biodiversity and environmental data which contributes to expanding our knowledge of the natural environment, including biological monitoring and the collection or interpretation of environmental observations.”

Surprisingly, there are not many citizen science projects in microbiology even though microbes are of interest to the majority of the public, as well as being tractable for these kinds of studies.

However, now, in relation to the popularity of this growing trend, the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) is to host a session at a conference in May. 

According to the ASM:

"This is going to rock.  Citizen microbiology – highlighted at the American Society for Microbiology Annual Meeting in Denver in May.  The details on the session are below.  Sunday May 19 at the American Society for Microbiology General Meeting in Denver.  If you are interested in attending Register here.  If you work on some aspect of Citizen Microbiology please consider submitting an abstract for a talk or poster. The deadline is January
15 17.  We will highlight ALL accepted abstracts in some way both during the session and in blogs, tweets, interviews, etc.  So please consider participating."

Posted by Tim Sandle