Raise Public Understanding of Science in Africa

As you may know, I have been involved with the Next Einstein Forum and have been working to help promote science in Africa and inspire the next generation of African scientists and innovators. For the past few weeks, I and colleague Ambassadors from other African countries have been leading a crowdfunding campaign on Fiat Physica. We are inviting you to join us in our efforts to increase public understanding of science to advance development in Africa. 

We feel that low public interest in science is slowing down Africa's development. While some scientists are able to undertake useful research on the continent, public skepticism makes it difficult for their discoveries to move from the lab to the community. Our youth stand at a disadvantage if they are not empowered with adequate skills and knowledge to reverse the status quo.

With our campaign, we want to draw attention to scientific advances in our countries by creating platforms through which scientists engage with the public.Our goal is to demystify science so that it becomes a bigger part of the cultural fibre of African societies.

We need YOU to join us in our effort by raising $8650 to help support the Public Understanding of Science for Development (#Sci4D) project.

Help us to connect Africa's scientists to the community and advance progress on the continent. Support us as we work toward changing mindsets and building a community of public engagement with science. Thank you!

Please take a minute to check out the full suite of NEF Ambassadors crowdfunding campaigns.

Innovating with Science and Technology at Accra Science Hack Day

The first ever Accra Science Hack Day, held at iSpace in Osu on 15th and 16th August 2015, brought together students, hobbyists, technologists and science enthusiasts from different parts of Ghana. They worked individually or in teams on interesting projects, either tackling a key societal problem or just having fun with science. It was an interesting learning experience for me, even though I participated as one of the facilitators, alongside Kobe Subramaniam, Anisha Tailor and Myf Owen (from Lab_13 Ghana), and Thomas Tagoe (GH Scientific).

I was very glad to see Junior Camp Internship Programme trainee Maame Yaa Serwaa expertly manage the registration desk and provide on-site support to iSpace Community Manager, Akua Baning. Akua ensured that all aspects of the event went on smoothly.

We were welcomed to the event by JCIP & iSpace intern Maame Yaa

Most of the hackers took a bit of time to arrive at iSpace at the advertised time on Day 1, which appeared to be a slow Saturday, but when they walked in their focus and level of engagement was consistent throughout the period of the programme. I spotted a few former students of mine from my Ketasco days. Lab_13 Ghana had also registered two of the beneficiaries of their hands-on science sessions, Samuel Darko and Perkins Frimpong. The two 14-year olds are pupils of Solid Hope Basic School in the Bosumtwe District.

Accra Science Hack Day kicks off at iSpace! Come to Osu and be part of the revolution #AccraScienceHackDay #iSpaceGh pic.twitter.com/0eElFwa5lH

— iSpacegh (@iSpaceGh) August 15, 2015

Kobe and I gave quick five minute lightening talks, after a brief welcome speech by Akua. I touched on citizen science as a tool for research and civic participation. I explained how the research, technology, and civic communities can come together to address challenges such as power cuts, pollution, and transport in Accra. Kobe's presentation was on innovating with micro-controller systems such as Arduino and Rapberry Pi. He used examples from Ghana and elsewhere to illustrate the ubiquity of these systems in an increasingly technological world.

Should we build robots that think like us? #AccraScienceHackDay #IspaceGh pic.twitter.com/tgue4pQbbH

— harryakligoh (@harryakligoh) August 15, 2015

The teams soon got down to business for the rest of Day 1 and most of Day 2.

Team Dumsor Automate developing their idea on Day 1

Day two #accrasciencehackday. S.P backpack (Solar Powered/Samuel and Perkins) is finished! For your charging needs. pic.twitter.com/yDqeLu4bi0

— Lab_13 Ghana (@lab_13ghana) August 16, 2015

At the end of Day 2, six teams made presentations:

1. Smart Borla: a refuse collection beam that sends signals to the collecting company when it is full
2. QBay: uses augmented reality to engage and enhance the learning experience for students.
3. Dumsor Automate: a system that enables remote control of electric gadget especially during power cuts
4. SP Backpack: solar-powered backpack that enables charging of mobile devices on-the-go
5. Secnet: a suite of online security tools
6. Gospel Scientist: explaining biblical principles using scientific demos
7. Linkages: an art piece depicting connections (visualise spider web) through the woldwide web.

Q-Bay presenting their tool for interactive learning via virtual reality #AccraScienceHackDay #iSpaceGh pic.twitter.com/Nxqouegwwx

— iSpacegh (@iSpaceGh) August 16, 2015

The judges, Fiifi Baidoo (iSpace), Kobe, and Tom had the unenviable task of picking out the winners from the pack.

Before the results were announced, Tom spoke on a new Wellcome Trust funded initiative we've been cooking up for quite some time now called SHAPE (Shaping Healthy Attitudes and Protecting the Environment). This project, led by GH Scientific, is aimed at engaging Junior High School students to analyse and design solutions to environmental health challenges in Accra.

Back to the main proceedings. Everyone was excited to learn how the teams placed at the end of two days of ideation and prototyping. The third position went to Dumsor Automate, the second to Q-Bay, and quite remarkably, SP Backpack from Lab_13 Ghana placed first! The boys, who earlier won the Boatastic boat-making competition (Titanic 2015), scientists-in-residence, and everyone associated with Lab_13 were over the moon. The win validates the idea of giving learners space to experiment and discover things for themselves.

Celebrating Samuel and Perkins Credit: Lighyer Foundation Facebook page

Overall, the event (#AccraScienceHackDay) was a great one and has the potential to become a mainstay on the Ghanaian tech circuit. Its hands-on nature challenges participants to move away from just talking about problems, and fantasising about possibilities, to actually building stuff, test and receive feedback. Going forward, I would like to see earnest efforts made to sustain the various projects started. Additionally, it'd be really cool to expand the event geographically, so other regions in Ghana will benefit. Hopefully, future events will see more innovations from fields aside electronics. There is huge potential for bio-hacking and data analytics projects in our context.

Huge thanks to iSpace for bringing such a truly remarkable event to Ghana. Commendations also go to Science Hack Day, the global organisers, and EndNote for their sponsorship.

If you were to participate in a Science Hack Day event, what project would you work on?

The Citizen Science Approach to Research: Report from GW4 Workshop, Bath

Source: thinkprogress.org

The idea of harnessing the collective or community input for a project is quite appealing to my African mind. Grassroots involvement fosters group ownership and often leads to better results. Movements such as GhanaThink, BloggingGhana and Enactus ride on the numbers and efforts of its members. When applied to science, public participation aids data collection and organisation, research design, and facilitates greater understanding of scientific phenomena. The active involvement of volunteers or "lay people" in the scientific enterprise, "citizen science", is a fast-growing paradigm in the scientific community and has the same essence as open source, open data and civic participation movements. It has wide applications ranging from social science research, through ecological studies, to unravelling the mysteries of the wider universe. I recently had the fortune to be part of a citizen science workshop organised by the United Kingdom's GW4 Universities at the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution, (BRLSI).

At the #Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution (@BRLSI) for a day's workshop on #CitizenScience. Hope to learn some cool stuff.
— Gameli Adzaho (@gamelmag) March 26, 2014

We were welcomed by Dr Helen Featherstone of University of Exeter who gave a brief intro of the day's activities. Dr Robert Simpson from University of Oxford, in the first presentation, gave an overview for the need and benefits of citizen science, drawing examples from the Zooniverse project.

.@orbitingfrog giving an insight into galaxy zoo & which began with kevin, a phd student #GW4CS pic.twitter.com/ZcwxCJpjkK
— erinmaochu (@erinmaochu) March 26, 2014

He made an interesting point on validating crowdsource data- data contributed by the most accurate and least accurate volunteers are equally important because of the consistency. Thus you can tell whether the data coming in is accurate or inaccurate.

Dr Erinma Ochu from the University of Manchester then explored the topic from a social science perspective, with examples from the Sunflower Experiment and other projects. Here's a key point she made:

You need to think about what participants stand to learn- Dr Erinma Ohui #CitizenScience
— Gameli Adzaho (@gamelmag) March 26, 2014

One of my favourite parts of the day was the structured networking session where the participants interacted about how they use citizen science in their work. In short three minute spells, I learnt briefly about projects such as mathMETics, IfOnly, and BodyTrack.

Next was a panel on citizen science case-studies featuring Lisa Austin (Bath, IfOnly), Alexander Todd (Exeter, CliMathNet), Dr Emma Rich (Bath, Citizen Journalism), Dr Jaap Velthuis (Bristol, HiSparc), and Dr Sarah Perkins (Cardiff, Project Splatter).

Panel discussion on GW4 citizen science projects

After the round-table, we broke for lunch amidst networking, followed by the breakout sessions. The breakouts focused on recruiting citizen scientists, methodological approaches and ethics. I was in the methodological approaches/ethics group and some of the issues raised include data ownership, blurring the line between academic and activist, limitations of institutional review processes, and citizen science governance.

Some useful technological and web resources for citizen science researchers were also shared among the group. Some of the less popular ones include Amazon Web Services (AWS), Storify, University Wiki pages, Open Street Map, Google tools (Maps, Apps, etc), Carto DB (for visualisation), Ushahidi (for crowdmapping) and Github (for open source code). 

I learnt a lot from what researchers are doing in the GW4 universities and other institutions. More than that, I enjoyed the brilliant opportunity to interact with the brains behind some really interesting citizen science projects. Hopefully we can do more with the larger public to piece together the puzzle that is life and derive better solutions for our pressing problems. Meanwhile, the conversation continues on Twitter via #GW4CS.