We made it!

 

Sunrise over the Atlantic.

We hit our funding goal yesterday, thanks to all of you who donated to this project...thank you! We are so touched by the number of people who felt moved by the project and supported us. 

So what is next? We are currently in the process of crunching the data of our second run, and prepare the poster for the ISME conference in 2 weeks (!). Next week Ana and Rachel will be at SDSU for a metagenomics workshop, which we hope will give us more insight and local networking. Once back, probably it would be a good time for a second deployment before the winter storms roll around. 

One of our backers wrote a message interested in bringing the system to high school/college kids. That would be in line with the original idea of this project, which was to have  project that could be implemented as a citizen science project, engaging students and the community in something they care about.

We'll keep you posted with what we are doing and planning. The project will have an extended goal as there are always more things we could do...we are thinking data loggers to track climate conditions, electron microscopy, more locations. And obviously, we are open to collaborations! Thanks again!!!!