About
MindHive is a community science platform for researchers, students, educators, community-based organizations, and community members across the US and beyond. We offer tools, mentorship programs, and educational materials to bring together experts and non-experts to co-design studies, collaborate in data collection and analysis, and communicate study outcomes to civic partners. MindHive's mission is to help promote a healthy science ecosystem by including all stakeholders in the full range of science inquiry.
If you are an educator and want to know more about our learning programs, see the For Teachers page.
If you’re a community-based organization interested in partnering with behavioral scientists and/or youth to co-design behavioral science research projects, please reach out to us at info@mindhive.science
MindHive is supported by the National Institute of Mental Health Science Education Partnership Program (R25 MH135446-01), and the US National Science Foundation (NSF #1908482 and #2241751) and is spearheaded by Drs. Suzanne Dikker and Camillia Matuk (New York University) in collaboration with Dr. Yury Shevchenko (Konstanz University) and Kim Burgas.
Contact info@mindhive.science for any questions or inquiries.
Current Projects
Environmental Neuroscience for All: A participatory science program and platform for students, teachers, scientists, and communities
Environmental Neuroscience for All will combine online and in-person tools to support authentic research experiences for socio-culturally diverse youth from both urban and rural schools across the US, who will work with scientists and civic partners to design studies that explore the relationship between our brains and our environment (How is our brain health and wellbeing affected by our environment? Can we help improve how we behave toward our environment by deepening our understanding of how the human brain is wired?). The program uses an open science and participatory science approach, training the next generation of scientists and communities to view environmental challenges not just as barriers, but as opportunities for research, innovation, and collaboration. (R25 MH135446-01)
Promoting Students' Data Literacy through the Creation of Interactive Multimodal Representations of Biometric Data
This project will promote data literacy in high school students by engaging them in learning about the Quantified Self -- the practice of using technology to track and reflect on one’s own biological, behavioral, physical, and/or emotional data. Learning activities will be designed to spark a broad interest in science and to help develop students? informed opinions about the role of human-generated data in public life. To achieve this goal, the project will develop and test software tools as well as lesson and professional development materials with which students and teachers can explore, analyze, and create novel, multimodal, and interactive representations of data, recorded by wearable biosensing devices. Students will learn about how data from their bodies can be captured and interpreted through hands-on STEM activities that include the creation of interactive data representations. Students will design and execute small exploration projects to answer their own questions and create offline and online artifacts to communicate their findings. Students will engage in discussions that consider the privacy implications of using data-fueled services, applications, and technologies and critically evaluate how their personal data is being used. During and after the project, instructors and students will have opportunities to connect with industry partners who work with biosensing and wearable technologies, and to access career and college readiness resources relevant to these and related data technology fields. (NSF #1908482)
Crowdsourcing neuroscience: An interactive cloud-based citizen science platform for high school students, teachers, and researchers
Current priorities in school science education include engaging students in the practices of science as well as the ideas of science. This project will address this priority by developing a cloud-based platform that enables high school students, teachers, and scientists to conduct original neuroscience research in school classrooms. Before students and teachers initiate their own studies using the system, they will participate in existing research studies by contributing their own data and collaborating with researchers using the online, interactive system. When experienced with the system, students and teachers will become researchers by developing independent investigations and uploading them to the interactive platform. Both student-initiated and scientist-initiated proposals will be submitted to the platform, peer-reviewed by students and scientists, revised, and included in the online experimental bank. In addition to conducting their own studies using the platform, scientists will act as educators and mentors by populating the experiment bank with studies that can serve as models for students and provide science content for the educational resource center. This online system addresses a critical need in science education to involve students more fully and authentically in scientific inquiry where they gain experience in exploring the unknown rather than confirming what is already known. (NSF #2241751)