Caryn Rubanovich (current 2nd year JDP student) and her mentor Dr. Cinnamon Bloss (JDP faculty member and JDP graduate) along with 3 other students and 4 other faculty from UC San Diego’s departments of communication, sociology, and the School of Medicine have received a UC San Diego Chancellor’s Interdisciplinary Collaboratory for Jan-Dec 2019 to support research and career development focused on the ethical and social implications of citizen science research models in biomedicine and genomics.

The funding will support projects in topics such as the impacts of direct-to-consumer genetic ancestry testing, genomics-related community-based participatory research with Indigenous communities, leveraging games to facilitate participation in the production of scientific knowledge, and personal data donation and participation in precision medicine initiatives.

Rubanovich and Bloss will be collaborating with Riley Taitingfong, Jonathan Walton (communication PhD students) and E. Carolina Mayes (sociology PhD student), as well as Lilly Irani, PhD, Daniel Hallin, PhD, (communication faculty), Daniel Navon, PhD (sociology faculty), and Timothy Mackey, PhD (school of medicine faculty).