Abstract
Citizen scientists have the potential to expand scientific research. The virtual research assistant called VERA empowers citizen scientists to engage in environmental science in two ways. First, it automatically generates simulations based on the conceptual models of ecological phenomena for repeated testing and feedback. Second, it leverages the Encyclopedia of Life biodiversity knowledgebase to support the process of model construction and revision.
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Acknowledgement
At Georgia Tech, we thank David Joyner and Taylor Hartman for their contributions to MILA-S, and Abbinayaa Subrahmanian, Christopher Cassion and Pramodith Ballapuram for their contributions to VERA. At Smithsonian Institution, we thank Katja Schulz for her contributions to EOL. This research is supported by an US NSF grant #1636848 (Big Data Spokes: Collaborative: Using Big Data for Environmental Sustainability: Big Data + AI Technology = Accessible, Usable, Useful Knowledge!) and the NSF South BigData Hub.
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An, S., Bates, R., Hammock, J., Rugaber, S., Goel, A. (2018). VERA: Popularizing Science Through AI. In: Penstein Rosé, C., et al. Artificial Intelligence in Education. AIED 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10948. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93846-2_6
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