Citizen science – a form of research where lay people contribute to scientific projects – has become increasingly important in the field of biodiversity research by helping to plug both temporal and spatial gaps in scientific projects as well as for scalability. Attractive projects are able to leverage public interest to collect vast amounts of data that would otherwise have been impossible with a limited budget and team size. Recent advances in AI and broad appeal via smartphone apps allow for even broader and more complex analyses. Not only researchers, but also the citizen scientists themselves benefit from the engagement, as such activities have been shown to promote a sense of connection to nature, improve mental health, and strengthen collective action for environmental conservation. Because of these mutual benefits, co-creation – whereby nonacademic partners are involved in scientific projects from the beginning – is often considered the gold standard for designing programs intended to produce actionable results. Besides exploring citizen science, co-creation, and other participative strategies for designing and carrying out collaborative and transdisciplinary research projects, the goals of this session include exemplifying the success of citizen science approaches, extrapolating the success factors and probing the limits of upscaling citizen science through the use of AI. We invite participants to share their approaches, methods, and results, focusing on their collaborations with nonacademic partners on the ground.