{"id":3400,"date":"2015-11-09T19:46:30","date_gmt":"2015-11-09T19:46:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.particlebites.com\/?p=3400"},"modified":"2015-11-09T19:55:36","modified_gmt":"2015-11-09T19:55:36","slug":"what-scientists-should-know-about-science-hack-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.particlebites.com\/?p=3400","title":{"rendered":"What Scientists Should Know About Science Hack Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of the failures of conventional science outreach is that it&#8217;s easy to say what our science is about, but it&#8217;s very difficult to convey what it&#8217;s like to <em>do<\/em> science. And on top of that, how can we do this in a way that:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>scales and can be ported to different places<\/li>\n<li>generates and nurtures a continued interest in science<\/li>\n<li>can patch on to practical and useful citizen science<\/li>\n<li>requires only a modest input from specialists?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Well, now there&#8217;s a killer-app for that.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Dzb_QCYxi3I\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3>Science Hack Day: San Francisco<\/h3>\n<p>I recently had the distinct privilege of participating in this year&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/sciencehackday.org\">Science Hack Day<\/a> (SHD) in <a href=\"http:\/\/sf.sciencehackday.org\">San Francisco<\/a> as a\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/sciencehackday.org\/ambassador\/\">Science Ambassador<\/a>. On the surface, SHD is a science-themed <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Hackathon\">hackathon<\/a>: a weekend where people get together to\u00a0collaboratively develop on\u00a0neat ideas.\u00a0More than this, though, Science Hack Day encapsulates precisely\u00a0the joy of collaborative discovery and problem solving that drew me into\u00a0a career in research.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_3404\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3404\" style=\"width: 640px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.particlebites.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/DSC02998.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-3404\" src=\"http:\/\/www.particlebites.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/DSC02998.jpg\" alt=\"Massively Multiplayer Science\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.particlebites.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/DSC02998.jpg 640w, https:\/\/www.particlebites.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/DSC02998-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3404\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ariel Waldman,\u00a0&#8216;global instigator&#8217;\u00a0for\u00a0Science Hack Day,\u00a0gives the open remarks at Science Hack Day: SF.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>I cannot understate how much this resonated with me as a scientist: over the course of about 30 hours, SHD was able to create a microcosm of how we do science, and it was able to do so in a way that\u00a0brought together\u00a0people of very different age groups, genders, ethnicities, and professional backgrounds to hack\u00a0and learn and create.\u00a0Many of these projects made use of open data sets, and many of\u00a0them ended up open source: either in the form of <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\">GitHub<\/a> repositories for software\u00a0or <a href=\"http:\/\/www.instructables.com\">instructables<\/a>\u00a0for more\u00a0physical creations.<\/p>\n<p>The hacks ranged from fun&#8212; such as a <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/mshah\/Kidney-The-Last-Stand\">board game based on the immune system<\/a>, to practical&#8212;a Chrome app that <a href=\"https:\/\/chrome.google.com\/webstore\/detail\/co2-checker\/cdkdjcogbiecabbgcmhohfnakbojhopi\">overlays CO2 emissions<\/a> onto Google Maps. They were marketable&#8212;a\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.instructables.com\/id\/3D-Candy-Pen\/?ALLSTEPS\">3D candy pen<\/a>, and\u00a0mesmerizing&#8212;an animation of <a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\/143545177\">15 years of\u00a0hand-drawn solar records<\/a>.\u00a0Some were simply\u00a0inspiring, such as coordinating a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.generosity.com\/fundraisers\/help-us-launch-saturn-day-around-the-world\">day to view the rings of saturn<\/a>\u00a0to spark interest in science.<\/p>\n<h3>The Best Parts of Grad School in 30 Hours<\/h3>\n<p>One thing that\u00a0especially rang true to me was that\u00a0Science Hack Day&#8212;like the actual day-to-day\u00a0science done by researchers&#8212;is not about deliverables.\u00a0The science isn&#8217;t the poster that you glued together at your 4th grade\u00a0science fair (or the journal article that is similarly glued together decades later), it&#8217;s\u00a0all of the action before that. It&#8217;s about\u00a0casual brainstorming, &#8220;literature reviews&#8221; looking for existing off-the-shelf tools, bumping into experts and\u00a0getting their feedback,\u00a0the\u00a0many times things break&#8212;and the breakthroughs from\u00a0understanding why, and then the devil-may-care kludges to get\u00a0a\u00a0prototype up and running\u00a0with\u00a0your teammates.<\/p>\n<p>All that is\u00a0what I want to convey when people\u00a0tell me that particle physics sounds neat,\u00a0but what exactly is it that we do all day long in the ivory tower? Now I know the answer: we&#8217;re science hacking&#8212;and you can try it out, too.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_3405\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3405\" style=\"width: 640px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.particlebites.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/DSC02999.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-3405 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/www.particlebites.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/DSC02999.jpg\" alt=\"DSC02999\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.particlebites.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/DSC02999.jpg 640w, https:\/\/www.particlebites.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/DSC02999-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3405\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ariel&#8217;s tips for Science Hack Day are also useful reminders for academic\u00a0researchers&#8230; and really, probably for everyone.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>And this, if you ask me, is precisely\u00a0what needs to be injected into science outreach.\u00a0It&#8217;s\u00a0always fantastic\u00a0when people are wow&#8217;ed by\u00a0inspiring talks by charismatic scientists&#8212;but\u00a0nothing\u00a0can replace the pure joy of actually\u00a0putting on the\u00a0proverbial lab coat and\u00a0losing yourself in curiosity-based tinkering and problem solving.<\/p>\n<h3>Boots on the ground outreach<\/h3>\n<p>I owe a lot to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mattbellis.com\">Matt Bellis<\/a>, a physicist and SHD veteran, for\u00a0preparing me for\u00a0SHD. He describes the event\u00a0from the point of view of a scientist as &#8220;boots on the ground outreach.&#8221; Science Hack Day is a way to &#8220;engage&#8221; with the\u00a0science-minded public in a meaningful way.<\/p>\n<p>And by &#8220;engage&#8221; I mean &#8220;make cool things.&#8221; I also mean &#8220;interact with as colleagues rather than as a teacher.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>And by &#8220;science-minded public,&#8221; I really mean a slice of the public\u00a0are already\u00a0interested in science, but\u00a0are also interested\u00a0in participating as citizen scientists,\u00a0continuing to tinker with code on GitHub or even just spreading the joy of science-themed hacking to their respective communities. This is science wanting to go viral, and the SHD participants\u00a0want to be patient zeroes.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_3408\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3408\" style=\"width: 650px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.particlebites.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/22295832079_d664d700aa_o.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-3408\" src=\"http:\/\/www.particlebites.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/22295832079_d664d700aa_o-1024x435.jpg\" alt=\"Image courtesy of Matt Biddulph.\" width=\"650\" height=\"276\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.particlebites.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/22295832079_d664d700aa_o-1024x435.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.particlebites.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/22295832079_d664d700aa_o-300x128.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.particlebites.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/22295832079_d664d700aa_o.jpg 1280w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 650px) 100vw, 650px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3408\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A shot of the crowd before project presentations at SHD:SF 2015.\u00a0Image courtesy of Matt Biddulph.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>SHD is free, volunteer driven (an Avogadro&#8217;s number of\u00a0<em>thank you<\/em>s\u00a0to the SHD organizers and volunteers), and open to the community.\u00a0The demographics of the crowd at SHD:SF was a lot closer\u00a0to the actual population of San Francisco, and\u00a0is thus a lot closer to the demographics that we academics want to also see reflected in the academy. Events like SHD\u00a0aren&#8217;t just preaching to the choir,\u00a0it&#8217;s a real opportunity to promote <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Science,_Technology,_Engineering,_and_Mathematics\">STEM<\/a> fields broadly to underrepresented groups.<\/p>\n<p>In fact,\u00a0think about the moment that you were hooked on science. For many of us, those moments are a combination of serendipity and opportunity.\u00a0What would it take to bring that to\u00a0make that spark accessible? SHD is one such event. And in fact,\u00a0it even generated\u00a0a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.generosity.com\/fundraisers\/help-us-launch-saturn-day-around-the-world\">science hack for precisely that<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h3>Open Science<\/h3>\n<p>There was also a valuable message to glean from the crowd at the event:\u00a0people want to play with data. And for the general public, they&#8217;re\u00a0even happier when academics\u00a0provide tools to play with data.<\/p>\n<p>Data doesn&#8217;t even have to be what you conventionally think of as data. Alex Parker&#8217;s &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\/143545177\">solar archive<\/a>&#8221; won the &#8220;best use of data&#8221; award for a dataset of 15 years of daily hand drawn images of the sun by astronomers at the\u00a0Mount Wilson Observatory. Alex&#8217;s team used image processing techniques to clean, organize, and animate the images. The result is hypnotic to watch, but\u00a0is also a gateway to actual science education:\u00a0what are these sun spots that they&#8217;re annotating?\u00a0How did they\u00a0draw these images?\u00a0What can we learn from this record?<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_3410\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3410\" style=\"width: 650px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.particlebites.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/opensciencehack.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-3410 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/www.particlebites.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/opensciencehack.jpg\" alt=\"opensciencehack\" width=\"650\" height=\"433\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.particlebites.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/opensciencehack.jpg 650w, https:\/\/www.particlebites.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/opensciencehack-300x200.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 650px) 100vw, 650px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3410\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Giving a &#8220;lightning talk&#8221; on data sets in particle physics. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slideshare.net\/fliptanedo\/science-hack-day-sf-2015\">Slides available<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Open data sets are a little more difficult in particle physics:\u00a0collider data is notoriously\u00a0subtle to perform analyses&#8212;mostly because\u00a0background subtraction typically requires advanced physics background.\u00a0Nevertheless, our field is\u00a0evolving slowly and there are now\u00a0some options available.\u00a0See my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slideshare.net\/fliptanedo\/science-hack-day-sf-2015\">lightning talk slides<\/a> for a brief discussion of these with links.<\/p>\n<p>The point, though, is that there is demand. And for the public, the more people demand open data sets&#8212;even just for &#8220;playing&#8221;&#8212;the\u00a0more scientists will understand the potential for productive partnerships with citizen scientists. And for scientists: make your tools available. This holds true even for technical tools&#8212;GitHub is a great way\u00a0to get your colleagues to pick up\u00a0the\u00a0research directions you find exciting by sharing <em>Mathematica<\/em> or <a href=\"https:\/\/jupyter.org\">Jupyter<\/a>\u00a0notebooks!<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3>The Science Hack Day\u00a0Movement<\/h3>\n<figure id=\"attachment_3412\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3412\" style=\"width: 640px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.particlebites.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/22479162041_428fe2498e_z.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-3412\" src=\"http:\/\/www.particlebites.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/22479162041_428fe2498e_z.jpg\" alt=\"SHD San Francisco participants video chatted with participants from parallel SHD events going on in Berlin and Madagascar. Photo courtesy of Matt Biddulph.\" width=\"640\" height=\"427\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.particlebites.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/22479162041_428fe2498e_z.jpg 640w, https:\/\/www.particlebites.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/22479162041_428fe2498e_z-300x200.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3412\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">SHD San Francisco participants were able to video chat with participants from parallel SHD events going on in Berlin and Madagascar. Photo courtesy of Matt Biddulph.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>A quick look at the <a href=\"http:\/\/sciencehackday.org\">SHD\u00a0main page<\/a>\u00a0shows that Science Hack Days are\u00a0popping up all over the world.\u00a0In true open source spirit, SHD even\u00a0has a\u00a0set of\u00a0resources for <a href=\"http:\/\/sciencehackday.org\/howto\/\">putting together your own\u00a0Science Hack Day event<\/a>. In other words,\u00a0Science Hack Day scales&#8212;you can build\u00a0upon the experiences of past events to build your own. I suspect that there is untapped potential to seed\u00a0Science Hack Day into universities, where many computer science departments have experience with hackathons and many physics departments have a large set of\u00a0lecture demonstrations that may be amenable to hacking.<\/p>\n<p>Needless to say, the weekend turned me\u00a0into a\u00a0Science Hack Day believer.\u00a0I strongly encourage anyone of any scientific background\u00a0to try out one of these events:\u00a0it&#8217;s\u00a0a weekend that doesn&#8217;t require any advance planning (though it helps to brainstorm), and you&#8217;ll be surprised at neat things you can develop, and what neat\u00a0new friends you make along the way. And that, to me,\u00a0is a\u00a0summary of\u00a0what&#8217;s great\u00a0about doing science.<\/p>\n<p>See you at the next Science Hack Day!<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><small><br \/>\n<em>Many thanks to the people who made SHD:SF so magical for me: Jun Axup and Rose Broome\u00a0for delightful conversations and their\u00a0enthusiasm, Matt Biddulph for\u00a0taking photos, Mayank Kedia, Kris Kooi, and Chrisantha Perera for hacking with me, all of the volunteers and sponsors (especially\u00a0the Sloan and Moore foundations for supporting the ambassador program), Matt Bellis for\u00a0passing on his past projects and data sets, and all of the wonderful hackers who I got to learn from and chat\u00a0with. Most importantly, though, huge thanks and gratitude to Ariel Waldman, who\u00a0is the driving force of the Science Hack Day movement and has brought so much joy and science to so many people while simultaneously being incredibly modest about her contributions.\u00a0<\/em><\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s about casual brainstorming, &#8220;literature reviews&#8221; looking for existing off-the-shelf tools, bumping into experts and getting their feedback, the many times things break&#8212;and the breakthroughs from understanding why, and then the devil-may-care kludges to get a prototype up and running with your teammates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-outreach"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.particlebites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.particlebites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.particlebites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.particlebites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.particlebites.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3400"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.particlebites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3400\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3418,"href":"https:\/\/www.particlebites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3400\/revisions\/3418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.particlebites.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.particlebites.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.particlebites.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}