Leading the technical transition of Canada's largest space-science education program from the Canadian Space Agency to Let's Talk Science — scaling to 24,000+ classrooms and 3.3 million students.
Tomatosphere is one of the longest-running and most successful STEM education programs in North America. Since 2001, it has engaged over 3.3 million students in a deceptively simple experiment: grow two sets of tomato seeds — one that has been aboard the International Space Station, one that stayed on Earth — and compare what happens.
Students don't know which packet is which. It's a blind experiment, designed to teach the scientific method through hands-on discovery. Over three to four weeks, classrooms across Canada and the United States observe germination rates, record data, and submit their results online. That data feeds into real research on the effects of microgravity and cosmic radiation on plant biology — science that supports future long-duration space missions, including eventual trips to Mars.
The program launched with 2,700 classrooms in its first year. By the time I was involved, it had grown to over 20,000 classrooms annually and had won the 2012 NSERC Award for Science Promotion — the most prestigious science outreach recognition in Canada.
For its first 14 years, Tomatosphere was operated by the Canadian Space Agency in partnership with the University of Guelph, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, and seed industry partners including HeinzSeed and Stokes Seeds. In 2014–2015, the CSA transferred operational responsibility to two organizations: Let's Talk Science for the Canadian program, and the First the Seed Foundation for the United States.
This wasn't a simple rebrand. The transition meant migrating the entire digital infrastructure — teacher registration, seed request fulfillment, experiment tracking, data collection and results submission — from the CSA's systems to a new platform under Let's Talk Science. And it had to happen without disrupting a single planting season. Teachers register as early as February for spring seeds; any gap in service meant classrooms left without materials and a national experiment with missing data.
I led the technical side of this transition for the Canadian program — building the new platform, migrating educator accounts, integrating with Let's Talk Science's existing database of teachers, and coordinating the handoff with the First the Seed Foundation to ensure the cross-border program remained seamless.
The Tomatosphere platform had to support a seasonal surge pattern — tens of thousands of registrations in a compressed window, followed by months of data collection and submission — while remaining dead simple for educators. Many participating teachers had never run a scientific experiment with their class before. The technology couldn't be the barrier.
Tomatosphere's scale is hard to overstate. Seeds flew aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour with astronaut Marc Garneau in 2000, aboard SpaceX Dragon capsules in 2016 and 2017 — including a batch of 2.1 million seeds that spent 23 days on the ISS — and most recently on SpaceX CRS-21 in December 2020, returning via parachute-assisted splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico in January 2021.
After Let's Talk Science took over Canadian operations, the program expanded dramatically. LTS's existing educator network introduced Tomatosphere to a wider audience, including northern and remote communities that had never participated. By 2017, the program exceeded 20,000 classrooms reaching approximately 500,000 students in a single year. Participation surged because the platform made it effortless: register, receive seeds, run the experiment, submit results, get the reveal.
The program's research contributions are real. Published studies found no adverse effects on germination from space exposure — seeds survived 23 months aboard the ISS and germinated successfully. This data directly supports future plans for growing food on long-duration missions.
Tomatosphere represents 62% of all Let's Talk Science educator interactions — the single largest touchpoint connecting Canadian teachers to hands-on STEM programming.
— ISED Canada, Evaluation of Funding to Let's Talk ScienceThe platform I built for Tomatosphere didn't just support a program — it became the backbone of Let's Talk Science's largest engagement channel. By integrating Tomatosphere into LTS's existing infrastructure, we turned a seasonal science experiment into a year-round pipeline connecting educators to STEM resources, professional development, and other programs like Living Space.
For me, this project was about executing a high-stakes transition flawlessly. There was no room for a failed season — 24,000 classrooms were counting on seeds arriving on time, the platform working on first login, and results flowing into a national dataset. The transition happened without a single disruption, and the program grew every year after.