Computer News No. 117  Sep.-Oct. 2005

The University Contributes to the World Community Grid

    1. First Academic Institution in Asia Pacific to Join World Community Grid
    2. About World Community Grid
    3. Call for Participation

1. First Academic Institution in Asia Pacific to Join World Community Grid

The University has become the first academic institution in Asia Pacific to join the World Community Grid.  A launching ceremony jointly organized by the University and IBM China/Hong Kong Limited was held on September 20, 2005 to officially mark the University's collaboration to become a partner of World Community Grid, which is a project initiated by IBM.  Ms Christine Fang, Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Council of Social Service, attended the ceremony as the guest-of-honour to show her support in this meaningful community initiative.

At the ceremony, the Vice-Chancellor called for participation from staff, students and alumni in the World Community Grid Project and remarked that if 10% of the HKU alumni can join hands with students and staff on campus, the University can contribute significant computational power from potentially more than 30,000 PCs to this effort.

 
From right: Vice-Chancellor Professor Lap-Chee Tsui, Pro-Vice-Chancellor Professor Joseph Lee, Miss Jasmine Tsoi, Chairlady of HKUSU Computer Society,  Ms Christine Fang, Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Council of Social Service, Dr N Ng, Director of Computer Centre, and Mr Timothy Cheung, General Manager of IBM, at the Launching Ceremony.

2. About World Community Grid

The World Community Grid is a global initiative launched by IBM in 2004 committed to applying the unused computing power of the world's estimated 650 million computers to address the most challenging humanitarian issues, such as new and existing infectious disease research, genomic disease research, natural disasters and hunger and environment research.  The work is built on the belief that technological innovation combined with visionary scientific research and large-scale volunteerism can change the world for better.  Each computation that a computer performs provides scientists with critical information that accelerates the pace of research.

Currently the World Community Grid is focusing on a project for advancing our knowledge of human disease.  By identifying the proteins that make up the Human Proteome, scientists can build the understanding needed for novel and effective treatments for diseases like cancer, HIV/AIDS, SARS, and malaria.

Volunteers from around the world can download and install a free and small program or “agent” onto their personal computers.  When idle, the computers will request data on a specific project from World Community Grid’s server.  They will then perform computations on this data, send the results back to the server, and ask the server for a new piece of work.

The software agent only runs when your computer is on and idle.  It will get tasks from the World Community Grid via the Internet. The software does not need to be connected to the Internet to compute the task, but once finished, it needs to return data via the Internet and get a new task.  IBM has reassured that the software agent is secure and do not do any harm to the computer.

3. Call for Participation

As of October 22, 2005, a total of 95,641 members globally have joined the World Community Grid and contributed 18,490 years of computation time.  The "HKU Team" has recruited 149 members (ranked 35 in terms of number of members in a team) and contributed more than 11 years of total run time (ranked 135).

All University members (and any users) are invited to join the "HKU Team" and donate their idle computer time to contribute in this global project.  You can join the “HKU Team” by installing the software agent on any Windows-based PC through the following simple steps:

(1) First visit http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org and click the button "download now" to install the software agent on your PC.  Then register with your chosen username.

(2) Once you have completed the registration process, visit web site http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/team/viewTeamInfo.do?teamId=1CHR5N8XN1 and click the button "join this team".

(3) After installation, you will see the icon on the right of the Windows task bar.  You may double click the icon to display the information of your software agent as shown below:

The success of the project will depend on the collective effort of individuals contributing the unused CPU time of their PCs to this not-for-profit endeavor altogether.  Act now to contribute!

For additional information or questions on the World Community Grid project, please visit http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org or contact the undersigned.