volunteering | Zooniverse

In this edition of Who’s who in the Zoo, meet Oluwatoyosi Oyegoke, a Zooniverse backend developer.

Who: Oluwatoyosi Oyegoke, Backend developer at Zooniverse

Location: University of Oxford

Zooniverse projects: Panoptes API, Panoptes Python Client & CLI, KaDE (Knowledge and Discovery Engine), BaJor (Azure Batch Job Runner), Active Learning Pipelines

What is your research about?

My work focuses on helping scientists manage the huge amount of data created by Zooniverse projects. These projects can produce millions of images from telescopes, wildlife cameras, or research surveys. Volunteers classify these images, and I build the systems that collect this information and make it useful for researchers.

I work on the Panoptes API, which is the core platform that stores project data and volunteer classifications. I also improve the Python client and CLI so researchers can easily access and analyse their data. Another part of my role involves building and maintaining the machine learning pipelines. These pipelines take the volunteer classifications, train models, run predictions, and manage large Azure Batch jobs.

In simple terms: scientists and volunteers create the data, machine learning tries to learn from it, and I build the tools and backend systems that help everything work together smoothly. My work makes it easier for researchers to understand very large datasets by improving the platforms and workflows behind the scenes.

How do Zooniverse volunteers contribute to your research?

Zooniverse volunteers play a central role in how the whole platform functions. They create the classifications that flow through the systems I work on, and their input is what brings each project to life. When a project is created, volunteers are the ones who generate the data that the platform processes, stores, and makes available to researchers.

My work focuses on the core systems behind this experience. I help maintain and improve the Panoptes API, the tools researchers use to access data, and the pipelines that handle classification processing and machine learning.

Everything depends on volunteers contributing high-quality classifications, and their work is what keeps the entire platform active and meaningful. What I find exciting is seeing how thousands of people from around the world can come together and create data that supports real scientific discovery. My role is to make sure the systems behind that process are fast, reliable, and able to handle the huge amount of participation that Zooniverse projects receive.

While I do not work on individual research outputs, the systems I help build and maintain support all the scientific papers, datasets, and discoveries that come from Zooniverse projects. Without volunteers, and without the infrastructure behind them.

What’s a surprising or fun fact about your research field?

For me, one surprising thing is how global the participation is. A project can receive classifications from people in completely different parts of the world within the same minute. It amazes me how many people contribute to science from their sofa, their commute, or wherever they happen to be.

What first got you interested in research?

I love working on systems that have a direct impact, and the mix of technology, community, and science is what keeps it exciting.

What’s something people might not expect about your job or daily routine?

One thing people might not expect is how often small changes make a big impact. Sometimes a single line of code or a small optimisation can improve performance for millions of classifications. It’s a very technical role, but it’s also rewarding to know that quiet, invisible work can support so many people doing science together.

Outside of work, what do you enjoy doing?

Outside of work, I spend my weekends playing football with friends. I also spend a lot of time playing video games like FIFA and GTA. It’s my favourite way to unwind and switch off. I also enjoy watching documentaries, especially ones about historical events, and I love exploring new technologies just out of curiosity. It keeps things fun and gives me something new to learn all the time.

Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers?

I’d just like to say that being part of Zooniverse has shown me how powerful community-driven science can be. Every contribution, no matter how small, helps move real research forward. It’s a privilege to help build the systems that make that possible, and I’m excited to see what volunteers and researchers will discover next.

Hi everyone, I’d like to let you know about a cool new project we are involved with. VOLCROWE is a three year research project funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council in the UK, bringing together a team of researchers (some of which are already involved with the Zooniverse, like Karen Masters) from the Universities of Portsmouth, Oxford, Manchester and Leeds. The PI of the project Joe Cox says “Broadly speaking, the team wants to understand more about the economics of the Zooniverse, including how and why it works in the way that it does. Our goal is to demonstrate to the community of economics and management scholars the increasingly amazing things that groups of people can achieve when they work together with a little help from technology. We believe that Zooniverse projects represent a specialised form of volunteering, although the existing literature on the economics of altruism hasn’t yet taken into account these new ways in which people can give their time and energy towards not-for-profit endeavours. Working together with Zooniverse volunteers, we intend to demonstrate how the digital economy is making it possible for people from all over the world to come together in vast numbers and make a contribution towards tackling major scientific problems such as understanding the nature of the Universe, climate change and even cancer.

These new forms of volunteering exemplified by the Zooniverse fundamentally alter the voluntary process as it is currently understood. The most obvious change relates to the ways in which people are able to give their time more flexibly and conveniently; such as contributing during their daily commute using a smart phone! It also opens new possibilities for the social and community aspects of volunteering in terms of creating a digitally integrated worldwide network of contributors. It may also be the case that commonly held motivations and associations with volunteering don’t hold or work differently in this context. For example, religious affiliations and memberships may or may not be as prevalent as they are with more traditional or recognised forms of volunteering. With the help of Zooniverse volunteers, the VOLCROWE team are exploring all of these issues (and more) with the view to establishing new economic models of digital volunteering.

To achieve this aim, we are going to be interacting with the Zooniverse community in a number of ways. First, we’ll be conducting a large scale survey to find out more about its contributors (don’t worry – you do not have to take part in the survey or give any personal information if you do not want to!). The survey data will be used to test the extent to which assumptions made by existing models of volunteering apply and, if necessary, to formulate new ones. We’ll also be taking a detailed look at usage statistics from a variety of projects and will test for trends in the patterns of contributions across the million (and counting) registered Zooniverse volunteers. This larger-scale analysis will be supplemented with a number of smaller sessions with groups of volunteers to help develop a more nuanced understanding of people’s relationships with and within the Zooniverse. Finally, we’ll be using our expertise from the economic and management sciences to study the organisation of the Zooniverse team themselves and analyse the ways and channels they use to communicate and to make decisions. In short, with the help of its volunteers, we want to find out what makes the Zooniverse tick!

In the survey analysis, no information will be collected that could be used to identify you personally. The only thing we will ask for is a Zooniverse ID so that we can match up your responses to your actual participation data; this will help us address some of the project’s most important research questions. The smaller group and one-to-one sessions will be less anonymous by their very nature, but participation will be on an entirely voluntary basis and we will only ever use the information we gather in a way in which you’re comfortable. The team would really appreciate your support and cooperation in helping us to better understand the processes and relationships that drive the Zooniverse. If we can achieve our goals, we may even be able to help to make it even better!”

Keep an eye out for VOLCROWE over the coming weeks and months; they’d love you to visit their website and follow them on Twitter.

Grant and the Zooniverse Team