ENGINEERING

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) today joins IBM's World Community Grid, which is destined to be the largest technology humanitarian effort ever launched. ACM will encourage its 80,000 members worldwide to donate their idle computing time to World Community Grid in an effort to find answers to some of the world's most challenging problems through unparalleled computational research provided by IBM. World Community Grid is harnessing the unused computer power of the world's computers and directing it to efforts that will help society. In six months, World Community Grid has donated 10,000 years of computer run time to scientific research through the more than 106,000 personal and business computers that have joined this effort. As a result, the Human Proteome Folding Project, World Community Grid's first research initiative, is more than 60 percent complete. According to the Institute for Systems Biology (ISB), which is sponsoring the project, World Community Grid will complete the Human Proteome Folding Project in less than a year; with ISB's current computational power, the research would have taken more than 100,000 years to finish. The project will provide scientists with information on how individual proteins behave within the human body, providing important clues to the development of cures for human disease. "We are very excited and proud to welcome the Association for Computing Machinery as a partner to World Community Grid, which has an outstanding reputation in the international scientific and education communities" said Stanley Litow, vice president, IBM Corporate Community Relations, and president, IBM International Foundation. "The organization has the potential to double our membership and in turn double the power that World Community Grid has to work on projects that help humanity. We applaud ACM's commitment to join this effort and welcome other organizations to join this effort." The Association for Computing Machinery, based in New York City, is a global organization dedicated to advancing computing as a science and a profession. ACM will encourage its 80,000 members in more than 100 countries to register their PCs and laptops to this humanitarian effort. "World Community Grid provides a unique technology solution to some pressing global problems," said David A. Patterson, ACM president. "We are asking our members all over the world to join with us in this innovative initiative to improve the lives of our member communities." Grid computing is a rapidly 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 PCs in use around the world, World Community Grid is working to create the world's largest grid solely for humanitarian purposes - in essence a virtual supercomputer for good works. 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. Projects in the following disciplines will be considered: - Medical Research - Genomics, proteomics, epidemiology, and biological system research - Environmental Research - Ecology, climatology, pollution, and preservation - Basic Research - Human health and welfare related studies Researchers and scientists interested in having their work considered for use on World Community Grid can apply via a Request for Proposals at its Website . Individuals can volunteer their idle and unused computing power by downloading World Community Grid's free software and registering at its Website .