Many of our readers know that in 2015 we launched a program called Mozilla Fellows for Science, designed to support four individuals over the course of ten months as they work to complete projects in open source, open science, and open education affiliated with their graduate institutions of choice. You may have met the fellows at an Open Science event, or heard them give updates on our monthly Community Calls, and if you have yet to hear from them, we’d like to change that. Now, a few months into their work, we’re launching a series of blogs authored by our Fellows, tackling issues in open science and their respective (and awesome!) projects.
In the next two weeks, we’ll host a series of one-per-day blogs written by our fellows, and every Friday following our Thursday Community Call, we’ll feature a quick round-up of the topics from their own blogs, listed here on the 2015 intro page, where you can also read more about the Fellows and their work.
Read on here, for a quick teaser from their blogs:
Christie Bahlai / @cbahlai
Meet Christie, an insect ecologist and educator in East Lansing, Michigan, U.S.A.
Recent blog: A fundamental difference of opinion
Choice quotes:
“So, Hi! I’m Christie and I am a research parasite.”
“…there is also a really important dynamic that’s often unacknowledged- the interplay between open science, privilege and power.”
“I think if you want to be the final answer in science, then you don’t really want to be a scientist. You just want to win.”
Jason Bobe / @jasonbobe
Meet Jason, director of the Sharing Lab at the Icahn Institute for Genomics and Multiscale Biology at Mount Sinai, in New York, U.S.A.
Recent blog: Participation Paradox
Choice quotes:
“For several years, I’ve made it a habit to ask audiences before giving a talk at biomedical conferences to raise a hand if they are currently enrolled in at least one organized health research study… To my continued surprise, the response is almost always tumbleweed.”
“There are some other positive signs that we may be on the cusp of a transformation in participation rates for some forms of research, aided by new mobile technologies…”
“While current participation rates in research are bleak, it’s ripe for change.”
Joey K. Lee / @leejoeyk
Meet Joey, geographer and computational media artist in Vancouver, Canada.
Recent blog: Now Entering: Fellowship Sprint. Population: Sci-Communication
Choice quotes:
“…rather than approach the fellowship as lone wolves, Rik and I decided to team up and collaborate – each of us doing what we both know and love to do. For Rik, that is to make software and resources that enable others to do open science and for me, to communicate science.”
“For me, the sprints are an opportunity to immerse myself in “learning through making” and help to build and facilitate science communication projects as a result.”
Richard Smith-Unna / @blahah404
Meet Richard, a computational biologist in Cambridge, U.K.
Recent Blog: Starting to sprint with slidewinder
Choice quotes:
“…after talking through ideas with the Mozilla Science Lab team, I’ve decided to focus on something that uses more of my particular skillset. Software and resources that enable others to do open science will be my focus.”
“I’ve struck up a particularly strong collaboration with my fellow Joey Lee…We ultimately decided that we work best by doing short, flexible projects rather than large monolithic ones. And we found out that we work particularly well together.”
“The uniting theme for my fellowship will be improving access to science.”
Intrigued? We hope you enjoyed this short snapshot into the impressive work of our fellows. Feel free to reach out to them with questions or comments on Twitter, and stay tuned for the fellows’ blog bonanza to come!