Monthly Archives: May 2019

News, Who's who in the Zoo

Who’s who in the Zoo – Coleman Krawczyk

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In this week’s edition of our Who’s who in the Zoo series, meet Coleman Krawczyk, who helps develop new analysis tools for Zooniverse data

– Helen

Coleman - Coleman Krawczyk

Name: Coleman Krawczyk

Location: University of Portsmouth, UK

 

 

 

Tell us about your role within the team 

I have been with the Zooniverse team for 4.5 years. I started out working as a front-end developer for two years and than switched to creating various data analysis tools used by the project teams.

 

What did you do in your life before the Zooniverse?

Before joining the Zooniverse I was a graduate student at Drexel University in Philadelphia getting my PhD in astrophysics.

 

What does your typical working day involve?

My typical work day involves researching new methods for analyzing data produced by Zooniverse projects, writing python code, and co-supervising PhD students.

 

How would you describe the Zooniverse in one sentence?

A collection of people working together to further our understanding of the world and the universe around us.

 

Tell us about the first Zooniverse project you were involved with

My introduction to the Zooniverse was reading the Galaxy Zoo 2 data release when I was in graduate school. I was so impressed by the project that when I was finishing up my PhD and saw a job opening as a Zooniverse developer I immediately dropped all my other applications and ended up submitting the Zooniverse one a month before the deadline (submitting anything early in astronomy almost never happens).

 

What are your top three citizen science projects? 

The Planetary Response Network – it is amazing to see the community come together to help out others in need.

Galaxy Builder – This project was developed by Tim Lingard (PhD student I am co-supervising) and has produced some amazing data to help us understand how galaxy spiral arms form.

Galaxy Zoo – This project is the reason the Zooniverse exists and paved the way for all the projects that came after it.

 

What advice would you give to a researcher considering creating a Zooniverse project?

It is easier than you think to create a project.

 

Where do you hope citizen science and the Zooniverse will be in 10 years time?

In 10 years I expect the Zooniverse and citizen science in general will be more integrated with machine learning allowing even larger data sets to be processed (I’m looking at you Large Synoptic Survey Telescope).

 

Do you have any party tricks or hidden talents?

I am good at working with yarn (crocheting, macrame, latch hook, knitting, etc…)

 

When not at work, where are we most likely to find you?

Playing video games, playing table top RPGs, reading books

 

 

Coleman is also involved with the Tactile Universe project that is helping to make astronomy more accessible to students with vision impairments.
Check it out here; https://tactileuniverse.org/

 

News

Notes on the Zooniverse Mobile App: New Functionality Release

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We recently deployed new functionality to our Zooniverse mobile app (available via iTunes and Google Play for iOS and Android). The list of what’s now available is:

  • Swipe (binary question [Yes/No, A/B, etc.] response)
  • Multi-answer question (A/B/C/D/etc.)
  • Rectangle drawing task (drawing a rectangle around a feature within a subject)
  • Multi-image subjects (e.g. uploading 2+ images as a single subject; users swipe up/down to display the different images)
  • Subject auto-linking (automatically linking subjects retired from one workflow into another workflow of interest on the same project; note – this is relevant not just for workflows on the app)
  • Push notifications (sending messages/alerts about new data, new workflows, etc., via the app)
  • Preview (an owner or collaborator on a project in development being able to preview a workflow in the ‘Preview’ section of the mobile app)
  • Beta Review (mobile enabled workflows are accessible through the ‘Beta Review’ section of the app for a project in the Beta Review process; includes an in-app feedback form)

Note: we will continue developing the app; this is just the end of Phase 1.

With this functionality in place, we’re reaching out to research teams to encourage them to ‘enable on mobile’ any workflows that use the above functionalities. Our goal is to have at least 6 active projects on the mobile app in June. At that time, we’ll send an e-newsletter to the full community of Zooniverse users encouraging them to download the app and check out the projects. This will be the first promotion of the app to our full community. The feedback we’ve received from the few projects that have used it so far has been great. We’re so excited to do a major push and we really want as many projects as possible to benefit from the attention and engagement.

With that in mind, if you’re leading a Zooniverse project and have any questions about where in the Project Editor ‘workflow’ interface to ‘enable on mobile’, don’t hesitate to email contact@zooniverse.org. And/or if you’re a volunteer and wonder if workflow(s) on a given project could be enabled on mobile, please post in that project’s Talk to start the conversation with the research team and us. The more, the merrier!

Looking forward to having more projects on the mobile app and launching a major promotional/recruitment push in June!

For more information on the mobile app, see:
https://blog.zooniverse.org/2018/11/05/beta-for-mobile/
https://blog.zooniverse.org/2018/05/18/notes-on-mobile-launching-a-workflow/