A Duke University study in India found that individuals engaged in citizen science, were more environmentally aware and stronger advocates for environmental health. Citizen science (also known as crowd science, crowd-sourced science, civic science, volunteer monitoring or networked science) is scientific research conducted, in whole or in part, by amateur or nonprofessional scientists. These projects may be run through government agencies to augment their own research or by NGOs working to solve some scientific problem or question.