University of Münster’s senseBox project receives millions in funding

Great success for the geoinformaticians of Münster University: The senseBox project receives around one million euros granted from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) as part of the "Open Photonik Pro" initiative. The senseBox is a kit for stationary and mobile measuring instruments used in citizen science and educational institutions and developed by scientists at the Institute for Geoinformatics at the University of Münster. The BMBF already supported the senseBox project from 2016 to September 2019. In recent years, citizens worldwide have set up more than 5,500 measuring stations and collected billions of environmental and weather data such as air pressure, temperature and UV radiation. These are freely accessible on the "openSenseMap" Internet map. Hundreds of schools and universities now use the senseBox in STEM subjects. So far, the senseBox has been a do-it-yourself construction kit that, in addition to setting up a photonic sensor network for citizen science, also promotes the fascination for photonic technologies among the public.