---
title: "Citizen science"
chunk: 14/19
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_science"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:12:57.708518+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

The distributed computing project Folding@home launched a program in March 2020 to assist researchers around the world who were working on finding a cure and learning more about the coronavirus pandemic. The initial wave of projects were meant to simulate potentially druggable protein targets from SARS-CoV-2 (and also its predecessor and close relation SARS-CoV, about which there is significantly more data available). In 2024, the project has been extended to look at other health issues including Alzheimer's and cancer.  The project asks volunteers to download the app and donate computing power for simulations.
The distributed computing project Rosetta@home also joined the effort in March 2020. The project uses computers of volunteers to model SARS-CoV-2 virus proteins to discover possible drug targets or create new proteins to neutralize the virus. Researchers revealed that with the help of Rosetta@home, they had been able to "accurately predict the atomic-scale structure of an important coronavirus protein weeks before it could be measured in the lab." In 2022, the parent Boinc company thanked contributors for donating their computer power and helping work on the de novo protein design including vaccine development.
The OpenPandemics – COVID-19 project is a partnership between Scripps Research and IBM's World Community Grid for a distributed computing project that "will automatically run a simulated experiment in the background [of connected home PCs] which will help predict the effectiveness of a particular chemical compound as a possible treatment for COVID-19". The project asked volunteers to donate unused computing power. In 2024, the project was looking at targeting the DNA polymerase of the cytomegalovirus to identify binders.
The Eterna OpenVaccine project enables video game players to "design an mRNA encoding a potential vaccine against the novel coronavirus."  In mid-2021, it was noted that the project had helped create a library of potential vaccine molecules to be tested at Stanford University; SU researchers also noted that importance of volunteers discussing the games and exchanging ideas.
In March 2020, the EU-Citizen.Science project had "a selection of resources related to the current COVID19 pandemic. It contains links to citizen science and crowdsourcing projects"
The COVID-19 Citizen Science project was "a new initiative by University of California, San Francisco physician-scientists" that "will allow anyone in the world age 18 or over to become a citizen scientist advancing understanding of the disease." By 2024, the Eureka platform had over 100,000 participants.
The CoronaReport digital journalism project was "a citizen science project which democratizes the reporting on the Coronavirus, and makes these reports accessible to other citizens." It was developed by the University of Edinburgh and asked people affected by Covid to share the social effects of the pandemic.
The COVID Symptom Tracker was a crowdsourced study of the symptoms of the virus. It was created in the UK by King's College London and Guy's and St Thomas' Hospitals. It had two million downloads by April 2020. Within three months, information from the app had helped identify six variations of Covid.  Government funding ended in early 2022, but due to the large number of volunteers, Zoe decided to continue the work to study general health.  By February 2023, over 75,000 people had downloaded the renamed Zoe Habit Tracker.
The Covid Near You epidemiology tool "uses crowdsourced data to visualize maps to help citizens and public health agencies identify current and potential hotspots for the recent pandemic coronavirus, COVID-19." The site was launched in Boston in March 2020; at the end of 2020 it was rebranded to Outbreaks Near Me and tracked both Covid and flu.
The We-Care project is a novel initiative by University of California, Davis researchers that uses anonymity and crowdsourced information to alert infected users and slow the spread of COVID-19.
COVID Radar was an app in the Netherlands, active between April 2020 and February 2022, with which users anonymously answered a short daily questionnaire asking about their symptoms, behavior, coronavirus test results, and vaccination status. Symptoms and behavior were visualized on a map and users received feedback on their individual risk and behaviors relative to the national mean. The app had over 250,000 users, who filled out the questionnaire over 8.5 million times. Research from this app continued to be used in 2024.
The Quantified Flu project is a co-designed citizen science effort for tracking symptoms and correlating them with physiological data from wearable devices that was launched in April 2020 and is still ongoing.
For coronavirus studies and information that can help enable citizen science, many online resources are available through open access and open science websites, including an intensive care medicine e-book chapter hosted by EMCrit and portals run by the Cambridge University Press, the Europe branch of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, The Lancet, John Wiley and Sons, and Springer Nature.
There have been suggestions that the pandemic and subsequent lockdown has boosted the public's awareness and interest in citizen science, with more people around the world having the motivation and the time to become involved in helping to investigate the illness and potentially move on to other areas of research.

== Around the world ==

The Citizen Science Global Partnership was created in 2022; the partnership brings together networks from Australia, Africa, Asia, Europe, South America and the USA.

=== Africa ===