Change the World with Your Computer

By Kim Andrews

Building a house by yourself would be a daunting task, but assemble a crew, and the difficult gets a lot easier. That’s the principle behind the IBM-led World Community Grid and the reason Rice has become a partner in this effort to join numerous individual computers into a large system with massive computational power that far exceeds the power of a supercomputer.

The World Community Grid, a group of more than 245 companies, associations, foundations, nonprofit organizations and academic institutions that contribute idle computer time for humanitarian research, uses Web-based technology to combine the processing power of computers in scattered locations to establish a permanent, flexible infrastructure that researchers can use to help solve complex problems related to cancer, AIDS and other pressing problems. Contributing computer power to the World Community Grid does not detract from local work performed on individual machines because grid tasks are performed only when a computer is idle.

In its first year, World Community Grid ran the Human Proteome Folding Project, which provided researchers with data on how individual proteins affect human health, enabling them to develop new therapies for diseases like Lyme disease, malaria and tuberculosis. Without the benefit of grid technology, it’s estimated the project would have taken about five years to complete instead of just one.

In November 2005, World Community Grid launched FightAIDS@Home. Sponsored by The Scripps Research Institute, FightAIDS@Home is using computational methods to identify new candidate drugs to block HIV protease, a key molecular structure that, when blocked, stops the virus from maturing and developing into full-blown AIDS. In July 2006, World Community Grid began the Help Defeat Cancer Project to devise new investigative tools to help doctors select proper treatments and provide accurate prognoses for cancer patients.

Computers on and off the Rice campus can join the Rice team, so personal and home computers also can donate idle time to this worthwhile humanitarian research effort. To contribute your computer’s idle time, go to www.worldcommunitygrid.org, download and install the free desktop software and identify your computer as part of the Rice University team. Security is a top concern for World Community Grid, and it is addressed seriously and vigilantly. For additional details on the grid’s security measures, refer to the security overview at www.rice.edu/vpit/pdf/wcg-security.pdf.