Grid records 100,000th computer and first college partner

Black Issues in Higher Education, May 19, 2005 by Ronald Roach

ARMONK, N.Y.

The World Community Grid has enlisted its 100,000th computer and its first university partner, Marist College, in the effort to find solutions to the most challenging scientific problems. The World Community Grid <http://www.worldcommunity grid.org/> is harnessing the unused power of the world's computers and channeling it to humanitarian efforts. In less than five months, more than 64,000 individuals have signed up their personal and business computers and have donated more than 8,250 years of computational time.

Grid computing is an emerging technology that can bring together the collective power of thousands or millions of individual computers to create a giant "virtual" system with massive computational strength. With more than 650 million personal computers in use globally, the World Community Grid is working to create the world's largest grid solely for humanitarian purposes--in essence a virtual supercomputer for good works, according to officials.

"World Community Grid has tremendous appeal and in a few months already has enabled individuals concerned about important causes like fighting cancer to get involved in the solution," says Stanley Litow, vice president of IBM Corporate Community Relations and president of IBM's International Foundation.

Marist College, a liberal arts college in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., is noted for its leadership in the use of technology to enhance the teaching and learning process. By joining World Community Grid, Marist has the potential to contribute more than 7,000 PCs and laptops to this humanitarian effort.

"Joining World Community Grid was a natural for us," says Marist College President Dennis J. Murray. "With our emphasis on technology and our commitment to serving others, we saw this opportunity as a great way to get our students directly involved in a very innovative project first hand. By joining World Community Grid, they are learning about the power of grid computing while at the same time giving back to society, which is in keeping with the Marist mission."

The World Community Grid has the capacity to run five to six projects a year for public and not-for-profit organizations. Research results will be made available to the world research community. The Human Proteome Folding Project, the World Community Grid's first project, is identifying the proteins that make up the Human Proteome so that scientists can better identify causes and potential cures for diseases like malaria and tuberculosis. In this project, World Community Grid has completed more than 6 million work units in five months, which might have taken a large supercomputer five years to accomplish, say officials.