The CSML Incubator helps fellows turn early ideas into new fundable initiatives in civic science. Since 2018, we have brought insights from our solutions journalism into support for projects in science communication, science outreach, informal science, citizen science, and related fields. Over 10 to 12 weeks, fellows work alongside a mentor already active in the field to understand a problem, explore possible solutions, and plan how to test their ideas. Mentorship, community, and practical guidance help fellows take their next step with a clearer sense of what they need to learn.
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By the numbers
Initiatives launched47Funds raised by fellows$70K+
Within one year of completing the program
Program began2018Latest fellow accepted2022
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Our mentorship model
A fellow and an experienced mentor investigate an idea together. We connect fellows with our solutions journalists, the people we interview, practitioners in their area, and others exploring similar ideas. Through intensive weekly conversations, fellows learn from their work and perspectives. Over 10 to 12 weeks, fellows have room to revisit questions as their idea develops.
Watch fellows present their projects at pitch day, the concluding event of the program. Explore recordings from the 2020, 2021, and 2022 cohorts.
Explore the pitch-day recordings
2022 fellow pitch day
2021 fellow pitch day
2020 fellow pitch day
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Funding partners
Our work would not be possible without philanthropic partners that share our commitment to supporting civic science ideas at their earliest and most formative stages.
Search by participant, project description, affiliation, or cohort year.
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Click an underlined initiative to learn more.
Name
Project launched
Affiliation
Year
Brittania Moodie
MIT
2022
Emily Sherman
2022
Kayleen Schreiber
Independent
2022
Ryan Powell
2022
Sqiniseko Majola
2022
Tannia M. Rodriguez
2022
Alexa Del Pilar Pérez Torres
Harvard University
2022
Carmen S. Dixon
Capital University
2022
Gina Errico
Oklahoma State University
2022
Isabel Rojas-Ferrer
Independent
2022
Jackson Anderson
Independent
2022
Amanda Coletti
University of Connecticut
2021
Caroline Hu
Harvard University
2021
Jacki Whisenant
University of Wisconsin–Madison
2021
John Carlo Combista
2021
Kate Thompson
University of Wisconsin–Madison
2021
Morgan DiCarlo
North Carolina State University
2021
Neysha Martinez-Orengo
Ponce Health Sciences University
2021
Robyn Wiseman
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
2021
Syafiq Aiman Mat Noor
University College London (UCL)
2021
Yefei Jin
Harvard Graduate School of Education
2021
Zhuoying Lin
UC San Diego
2021
Khushbu Kshirsagar
Tufts University
2021
Mandy Pinheiro
Boston University
2021
Rose Leach
Kent State University
2021
Sam Hansen
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
2021
Sarah Lamm
University of Kansas
2021
Israel Robinson
REACH
Tufts University
2020
Niba Nirmal
Duke
2020
Nida Rehmani, PhD
STEMtransitions
NYAS
2020
Amrita A Iyer
Baylor College of Medicine
2020
Danielle Jones
Kent State University
2020
Donald (D.J.) Bradshaw
Neurotrauma Advocacy Initiative (NAI)
Uniformed Services University
2020
Gabriela Arango
University of California, Berkeley
2020
Priscila Guzman
Kansas State University
2020
Rosario Marroquin-Flores
Illinois State University
2020
Sarah White
Northwestern University
2020
Selena Tran
University of Michigan
2020
Urmimala Basu
Harvard Medical School
2020
Accadius Lunayo
SCILABS
University of Nairobi
2019
Dani Crain
Science in a Box
Baylor University
2019
Katherine Hatcher
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
2019
Pete Vollbrecht
Western Michigan University
2019
Cautney Nelson
Independent
2019
Kristine S. Cay
UCSD
2019
Lisa Cox
Science Zine
Northwestern
2019
Leah Bury
Drawn2Science
MIT
2018
No projects match your search and selected years. Try another search or clear the year filters.
CYD Institute #ProjectNAVIGATE's mission is to develop a novel educational framework that builds supportive and collaborative communities to engage students through storytelling and equip them with the 21st century skills that are critical for navigating the transition to high school and beyond.
The goal of Let's Link Labs is to offer a way for scientists in other fields to connect with neuroscientists at neuroscience conferences. In doing so, this will provide a boost to neuroscience as well. The target audience is undergraduates in a STEM field other than neuroscience who are interested in forming interpersonal connections as well as interdisciplinary research.
Many articles covering scientific discoveries (especially in health and nutrition) focus on a single study without providing context about the rest of the scientific work that has been done on the topic. There isn’t discussion about how much other research has been done on the topic or how the specific discovery fits into or contrasts other related research. Science Trendline creates interactive data visualizations that show all of the research on a given specific health topic in one graph. The user can quickly get a sense of how much research has been done, how long has the topic been studied, what the trend of results is, whether there seems to be a scientific consensus, and whether there are important outlier studies. If desired, the viewer can hover over specific datapoints and get more information about each study (description, limitations, conflicts of interest, etc.).
Goldilocks Zone is a music & animation studio helping STEM educators and communicators tap into the power of song and story. We bring songwriters and animators together to provide a uniquely effective way to promote, educate, and share current and relevant STEM topics for those seeking broader audiences. Our target audience is communicators that exist via online educational platforms such as science YouTube channels, and our sub-audience is gradeschool children.
Our mission is to connect scientists, health practitioners and orphaned South African children in high school by hosting live events where scientists and health practitioners talk to the children about what they do. This project aims to increase stem identity, stem knowledge and stem interest.
LatinxinBME is an online community-powered platform which aims to promote and support the professional and personal development of all Latinx in biomedical engineering (BME), increase the representation of Latinx at all levels of the profession, and build a community of peers to feel connected through scholarship and friendship.
PResearch is a program that will teach undergraduates from Puerto Rico one critical skill for any scientist: reading a research article. To do so we will pair undergraduates with graduate students and post-docs from a range of institutions to coach them on how to read the article. Additionally, students will present the article at the end of the program in a 'journal-club' style presentation.
Girls in Science Day's seeks to give middle school girls around the country access to hands-on STEM experiences with professional STEM role models. We plan to do this by forming a website with a virtual toolkit that trains our target audience, communities/school districts/universities to use their own existing resources to host their own events, reaching middle school girls in STEM across the nation.
SciXplorers' mission is to give kids the tools to learn the scientific method in an informal way, by putting them in the driver's seat of their own creativity. Our target audience is middle school aged children. Our approach is to use an app with different STEM related projects that can be completed independently, using little/no supplies. By giving kids the independence to explore science, the goal is to instill confidence in their problem-solving skills and inspire lifelong learning.
Animals ‘R’ Dope is a multilingual Instagram page that provides scientifically backed animal facts in order to combat ‘fake’ animal news on social media
Nexus Alternatives is a gourmet mushroom cultivation supply company that believes in the power of a good story. We explore novel ways to enrich the home-growing experience by integrating it with art, science, and storytelling.
The goal of STEM Identity Storytelling is to design and evaluate a storytelling training program for minoritized STEM graduate students. By focusing on STEM identity, strategic science communication, and oral storytelling, this program aims to foster participants' STEM identity, cultivate their storytelling skills, and gain confidence to share their diverse stories.
Museum Zine's mission is to bring more perspectives into science communication by including middle school students in the behind-the-scenes investigation and generation of museum content. Attendees of Museum Zines workshops will be guided by expert scientists and artists in the creation of a zine (booklet of words and pictures) and given the opportunity to share their work with the public.
Insect Adventures is a set of curriculum adventures for teachers to assist their students in exploring and appreciating the world of insects. By providing a guide to finding insects in the wild, we ensure that
Hear DIS-Ability! is a project that serves as a central community hub to bridge or connect disabled individuals in STEM to organizations or creators’ media or storytelling platforms who are looking for opportunities to amplify their voices through storytelling and vice versa. I hope that my project will serve as a platform to voice out the feelings and emotions they have inside and show other individuals with disabilities that it is possible to pursue STEM-related careers and succeed in it. And hopefully, it will give the normal individuals the opportunity to listen to their voices and change their perception and misconceptions about people living with disabilities.
B-STEAMnista's mission is to make STEM education more culturally relevant and engaging. Our target audience is STEAM teachers (middle and high school) serving Hispanic populations. Our approach includes a series of workshops to provide training for educators on how to custom their lessons based on students needs, and a website where they can access resources for their classes and showcase their outcomes.
The goal of Lady Lab Rats is to re-establish trust between science and the public. By turning elementary school students into investigative science journalists, we hope to build excitement, curiosity, and understanding. Students armed with science knowledge, research skills, and diverse mentors will help tackle the division in society caused by misinformation and lack of trust.
The initiative aims to provide a research-based online professional development mentorship programme for science teachers. In the program, the teacher will create a scientific inquiry curriculum based on educational research and implement the developed curriculum in classroom practices.
Third Room's mission to harness the power of social capital to strengthen the school-to-work pipeline. We do this by building personalized social networks for students that turn simple connections into real job opportunities.
MakerXchange is a marketplace for creators in informal S.T.E.M. Education to exchange ideas and collaborate.
Sport STEMinist uses sports as a medium to build STEM related self-efficacy and self-esteem in girls throughout Greater Boston. We will be engaging girls in sport based interactive learning workshops to build STEM related self-efficacy and self-esteem .
Our mission is to increase the availability and ease of incorporating technology-free alternative teaching methods into high school science curricula through board games. STEMsapien Games provides game-based learning, rooted in Common Core, to high school science educators in underserved communities for free. EvoHom is the first board game from STEMsapien Games, which aims to make learning about human evolution fun and accessible for high school students.
The first of its kind, a holistic program for mathematicians who want to learn to tell interesting, relatable, and most of all, mathematical stories.
Rocks and Rockets is a family-focused science outreach initiative co-founded by Sarah Lamm in Colby, Kansas. Through activities spanning geoscience, chemistry, and astronomy, it brings children and adults together to explore science, with experiences designed for parents and children to enjoy side by side.
Training to craft and deliver an effective scientific talk for any kind of audience.
The goal of NeuroWellness for Young Adults is to educate high school students about the neurobiology that underlies our complex mental lives in order to decrease stigma surrounding mental illness and encourage behaviors that support brain health and mental wellness
To foster scientific curiosity in kids and environmental literacy in all ages
Our mission is to empower Latinx youth to pursue STEM careers by exposing them to positive role models, cultivating high expectations of themselves and strengthening their family support system.
PubNavigator is a platform that communicates the findings of peer-reviewed publications in an accessible way by providing training materials to those interested in building science communication skills and produce content that can be used as a teaching tool in the classroom.
The PhD Princess aims to empower preK-12 science educators to leverage students' interests in pop culture to increase engagement in STEM through provision of high-quality educational materials and trainings.
The mission of SEAable Research (SEAR) centers around the values of representation, connection, and inclusivity. SEAR aims to promote the presence of Southeast Asian (SEA) researchers within academia, industry, government, nonprofit, and so forth.
Scixtend is an initiative that aims to teach written and verbal communication through workshops tailored to the non-native speakers from developing countries with special emphasis on technical communication.
Courageous Coders creates step-by-step, introductory coding tutorials in the R programming language. Through institutional partnerships, Courageous Coders content is delivered to adult learners from marginalized groups who are undergoing career transitions to build a more diverse talent pipeline into coding career trajectories.
CE it Be it! aims to introduce the next generation to civil engineering. Our mission is to help offset the growing need for engineering talent that is prepared to solve emerging challenges by recruiting from diverse, previously untapped groups.
The goal is to centralize existing chemistry resources along with creating content for emerging chemists in college to navigate through their career and study.
A weekly audio show exploring science and education through conversations with researchers, educators, and graduate students.
A weekly podcast featuring conversations with scientists who study hormones. Each episode explores the wide-ranging world of hormone research while highlighting the diverse people behind the science.
Notes by Niba explores how scientific discoveries shape everyday life, from beauty and food to forests, laboratory research, and the relationship between technology and power. Through warm, curious, visually crafted storytelling, Niba makes complex ideas accessible and invites audiences to see familiar experiences in a new light.
The program "strives to provide exciting, engaging, and assessable science engagement for underserved and underrepresented populations."
Millennial Science, founded by Cautney Nelson, offers free, interactive STEM activities for children in low-income and underrepresented communities. Working with local libraries and student volunteers, the initiative helps young people explore science through hands-on learning and discover possible STEM careers.
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