Taufer (seated) maintains Docking@Home with the help of University of Delaware students Kevin Kreiser and Trilce Estrada.
We spend a lot of time in front of the computer and most of it isn’t idle. So we hadn’t given much thought to our computer’s downtime until we read about the Docking@Home project, in which volunteers allow their inactive Internet-connected computers to be used for scientific calculations for medical research. That means while we’re at lunch, our computer can be helping arthritis, HIV and breast-cancer researchers in their work.
Creating molecular models of prospective drugs before laboratory testing can be expensive and time-consuming, so to distribute the work, this program was created by Michela Taufer, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Computer and Information Sciences at the University of Delaware. Volunteers download software called Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC), a collaboration between the University of Delaware, the Scripps Research Institute and the University of California, Berkeley. (Docking@Home supports only Windows and Linux machines for now, so those of us with Macs can’t participate.)
The computations are temporarily suspended when the computer is in use and volunteers can set specific preferences, such as how long the computer is idle before participation begins. “It is very important for us that our volunteers are not disturbed while working and [they] feel that we are not interfering with their work,” Taufer says. BOINC also ensures that volunteers’ computers are secure and not damaged in any way.
Currently, there are about 6,000 Docking@Home participants and “we are always welcoming new volunteers,” Taufer says. We think that this project sounds like a relatively simple way to help with important research. What do you think of donating your computer’s idle time?
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4 Reader Comments:
Dont’ forget that once you are doing good for science that you can also join in the communities that have been taking part in Distributed Computing for many years. Team Phoenix Rising has been a top team in many projects and is a great community of people working towards a common aim of using the computer power at members disposal to a “greater good”. Come and take a look at http://forums.teamphoenixrising.net/forumdisplay.php?f=66
DoubleTop.
I would suggest to anyone looking to get involved with Docking@home to do so through GridRepublic.org. GridRepublic is a 501(c)(3) non-profit working in collaboration with BOINC to create an easier way to discover, join, and manage your interaction with projects using BOINC.
GridRepublic makes it easy to join with a single login and simple point and clicks to join and change everything.
You also can find projects which support Macs here.
GridRepublic URL: http://www.gridrepublic.org
So, we have another article covering a project without mentioning BOINC, or WCG. These oversites are less than helpful in getting the word out.
There are many really worthwhile projects running BOINC software, including World Community Grid.
The World Community Grid sounds interesting–thank you for letting us know about it with your post! The blog does mention the Berkeley Infrastructure for Network Computing in the second paragraph: “Volunteers download software called Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC), a collaboration between the University of Delaware, the Scripps Research Institute and the University of California, Berkeley.” I added a hyperlink, so it now appears in red, and people can link to the BOINC site you provided for more information.