[Coral-List] SciFund Challenge

[Lindsay Aylesworth]

Hello, Coral Listserv! 


This is just an FYI that #SciFund, the largest Science Crowdfunding project 
on the internet, has launched its fourth round at 
https://experiment.com/institutions/scifund. Last time, we raised $76K 
for science. This time, with 23 projects, we've already hit $15K, and 
it's just going up.

So, I'm not emailing this listserv to ask 
people to go and donate. Although, if you're inclined, great. But what 
we'd be even more interested in is if you would send this information 
out to friends, students, etc., who would be interested in learning more
 about some of the great Science being done by #SciFund participants. 
Helping us spread the word through facebook, twitter and other forms of social media would be greatly appreciated.

The
 goal behind #SciFund is to give young scientists an incentive to get 
out there and begin to couple outreach to the earliest stages of their 
research programs. We ask that participants create videos about their 
research, and encourage them to create rewards for donations that will 
make them involve the general public with their work on into the future.

This
 time around there are some wonderful marine  project videos (some of 
them might even be worth using in classes) of people communicating their
 research. Here are a few great marine examples

What are the feeding habitats of threatened sharks? 

https://experiment.com/projects/what-are-the-feeding-habits-of-threatened-sharks

Searching for seahorses & sustainability
https://experiment.com/projects/searching-for-seahorses-sustainability

Sex in the sea: uncovering the mating behavior of giant sea bass

https://experiment.com/projects/sex-in-the-sea-uncovering-the-mating-behavior-of-giant-sea-bass

Using DNA to protect Fiji's fisheries
https://experiment.com/projects/using-genetic-techniques-to-protect-fiji-s-fisheries

How can we better protect the biodiversity of the rocky intertidal?
https://experiment.com/projects/how-can-we-better-protect-the-biodiversity-of-the-rocky-intertidal


And these are just a few of the marine projects in this round. For more 
projects and videos, check out  
https://experiment.com/institutions/scifund 

If you're interested
 in science crowdfunding in general, 

check out this great post by Zen 
Faulkes 

http://neurodojo.blogspot.com/2012/05/why-crowdfunding-is-needed-precis.html 


or the SciFund blog at 

http://scifundchallenge.org/blog/ 

which also 
has a statistical analysis of some results from previous rounds.

Thanks, and, please, spread the word!


Sincerely, 

Lindsay
Lindsay Aylesworth
PhD Candidate
Project Seahorse
University of British Columbia
lindsay.aylesworth at gmail.com

I'm crowdfunding with #Scifund Challenge:
experiment.com/seahorses