Community Partnerships

Changing the world . . . with your computer

Millions of personal computers sit idly on desks and in homes worldwide. During this idle time, the mysteries of science and space continue to elude us. What if each of the worlds’ estimated 650 million PCs could be linked to focus on humanity’s most pressing issues?

World Community Grid's mission is to create the largest public computing grid benefiting humanity. The work is built on the belief that technological innovation combined with visionary scientific research and large-scale volunteerism can change the world for the better. The success depends on individuals - like you - collectively contributing their unused computer time to this not-for-profit endeavor.

World Community Grid will address global humanitarian issues, such as:

• New and existing infectious disease research: Researching cures for HIV and AIDS, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), malaria, and others.
• Genomic and disease research: The Human Proteome Folding project—World Community Grid’s first project—seeks to help identify the functions of the proteins that are coded by human genes.
• Natural disasters and hunger: World Community Grid applications can help researchers and scientists with earthquake predictions, improving crop yields and evaluating the supply of critical natural resources like water.

United Way of Broome County has joined World Community Grid

To make this vision a reality, United Way of Broome County has become a partner of World Community Grid, joining the IBM Corporation and a group of leading foundations, public organizations, and academic institutions. World Community Grid establishes a permanent, flexible infrastructure that provides researchers with a readily available pool of computational power that can be used to solve problems plaguing humanity. Importantly, World Community Grid is easy and safe to use. 

Everyone who would like to join this international effort should go to www.worldcommunitygrid.org and simply download and install a free, small software program on their computers. When idle, these computers request data from World Community Grid’s server. Computers then perform computations using this data, send the results back to the server and prompt it for a new piece of work.

What is grid technology?

Grid technology joins together many individual computers, creating a large system with massive computational power that exceeds the power of a few supercomputers. This capability can be applied, on a global scale, to very large and complex problems for the benefit of humanity. 

The benefits are proven. In 2003, IBM was one of the sponsors of a smallpox study that took advantage of grid computing. This study, using today’s largest available super computers, would have taken years to complete. With grid computing, this study was completed in less than six months and identified 45 potential smallpox-treatment candidates. 

World Community Grid provides an efficient and effective way to make a difference on problems that plague humanity. We are asking our employees, members, family and friends to join World Community Grid as part of our overall efforts to enrich the lives of the United Way of Broome County communities.  In addition, we would like for everyone to become a member of the United Way of Broome County team.

United Way of Broome County has joined State University of New York - New Paltz, Rochester Institute of Technology, Questacon, The University of Hong Kong, and other leaders in the world community in partnering with World Community Grid to help solve problems that are plaguing humanity.

Updated: May 21, 2008