BOINC - Computer Resource Volunteering
@ International School of London
What is Computer volunteering
Computer volunteering allows any member of the public to install a small application on most internet connected devices and donate any unused resource to the World Community Grid. These application work in securely isolated environment so there is no risk of any internal data being exposed.
The World Community Grid software uses the idle time of Internet-connected computers to perform research calculations. Users install BOINC client software onto their computers. This software works in the background, using spare system resources to process work for WCG and BOINC. When a piece of work or workunit is completed, the client software sends it back to WCG over the Internet and downloads a new workunit. To ensure accuracy, the WCG servers send out multiple copies of each workunit. Then, when the results are received, they are collected and validated against each other. Users may choose to use graphics output by the current workunit as a screensaver.
Currently ISL has this application installed on 8 out of 20 of its servers spanning across ISL London, ISL Surrey and ISL Qatar, donating approximately 25% of overall capacity
ISL Project donation overview
For every second of processing power donated to this grid, ISL is contributing a substantial value towards helping and supporting 5 projects. These cover a broad area across the scientific spectrum and support research to happen on a scale not possible in traditional and conventional ways.
To view our combined histrocal contribution, please use this link.
- Climate predication
- Malaria control
- theSkyNet POGS
- FightAIDS@Home
- Mapping Cancer Markers
Project contact
To gather more details about the project or if you have questions, feel free to contact Joris Deckers. We are continuously looking for groups to collaborate with.
About BOINC
David Anderson, BOINC co-founder
Useful links and Research Papers
Our Projects
- Climate predication
- Malaria control
- theSkyNet POGS
- FightAIDS@Home
- Mapping Cancer Markers
- ISL Server Farm
Climate predication
Climateprediction.net is a volunteer computing, climate modelling project based at the University of Oxford in the Environmental Change Institute, the Oxford e-Research Centre and Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics.
They have a team of 13 climate scientists, computing experts and graduate students working on this project, as well as their own partners and collaborators working at other universities, research and non-profit organisations around the world.
They run climate modelling experiments using the computer resources made available by thousands of volunteers. This allows them to answer important and difficult questions about how climate change is affecting our world now and how it will affect our world in the future.
Malaria control
The malariacontrol.net project is an application that makes use of network computing for stochastic modelling of the clinical epidemiology and natural history of Plasmodium falciparum malaria.
The fight against malaria was given a new impetus by the call for eradication at the Gates Malaria Forum in October 2007, making more but still limited resources available for research, development, and combating malaria. To inform decisions on which new or existing tools to prioritize, we have developed a general platform for comparing, fitting, and evaluating stochastic simulation models of Plasmodium falciparum malaria, programmed in C++ .
theSkyNet POGS
theSkyNet is a community computing project dedicated to radio astronomy. Astronomers use telescopes to observe the Universe at many different wavelengths. All day, every day, signals from distant galaxies, stars and other cosmic bits and pieces arrive at the Earth in the form of visible (optical) light, radio waves, infrared radiation, ultraviolet radiation and many other types of waves. Once detected by a telescope the signal is processed by computers and used by scientists to support a theory or inspire a new one.
Data collected by one of several radio telescopes is sent to our computers as a small data packet ready for processing by the Nereus client. Once processing of the data packet has taken place it is sent back and the process begins all over again. By repeating this process across thousands of computers, it is possible to simulate a single powerful machine capable of doing real and relevant scientific research.
3D Virtual Reality tour of the Green Bank Telescope Part 1 & Part 2 
FightAIDS@Home
The team behind FightAIDS@Home is launching Phase 2 of the project, putting to use a more accurate simulation tool to help them determine which of the Phase 1 results merit further investigation. Phase 2 will also be applying this analysis technique at an unprecedented scale, which if proven successful, can benefit medical research not only for HIV but many other diseases as well.
There have been some amazing advances in the fight against the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), including treatments that have improved and extended millions of lives. But the fight continues - HIV is continually mutating, and as it does it evolves resistance to existing treatments. With tens of millions of people currently living with HIV, and millions more infected every year, the search for more effective HIV treatments is as critical as ever. Our team is therefore launching a new phase of HIV research to build on the success of the first phase and more accurately analyse the most promising drug candidates we've identified so far.
Mapping Cancer Markers
Mapping Cancer Markers on World Community Grid aims to identify the markers associated with various types of cancer. The project is analysing millions of data points collected from thousands of healthy and cancerous patient tissue samples. These include tissues with lung, ovarian, prostate, pancreatic and breast cancers. By comparing these different data points, researchers aim to identify patterns of markers for different cancers and correlate them with different outcomes, including responsiveness to various treatment options.
The pattern of markers can determine whether an individual is susceptible to developing a specific form of cancer, and may also predict the progression of the disease, helping to suggest the best treatment for a given individual. For example, two patients with the same form of cancer may have different outcomes and react differently to the same treatment due to a different genetic profile. While several markers are already known to be associated with certain cancers, there are many more to be discovered, as cancer is highly heterogeneous.