INDUSTRY

IBM announced it will sponsor the 2005 IBM North America Grid Scholars Challenge -- a contest offering American and Canadian university students and faculty advisors the opportunity to increase the understanding of Grid computing and the importance of open standards and open source implementation. IBM is seeking the greatest in student innovators, providing the winners a laptop from the IBM ThinkPad T-series line. "IBM is highly committed to advancing the technology in Grid computing solutions and open source implementations," said Ken King, vice president IBM Grid computing. "Open source implementations help accelerate the adoption of Grid standards. We are constantly working toward increasing the awareness and the acceptance of Grid computing and recognize that many of the new advances in Grid computing will come at the university level through innovative thinking and research." As part of the Challenge, students will submit a project to be reviewed by a panel of Grid computing experts, with judging based on originality, technical value, completeness and feasibility of implementation. IBM ThinkPad laptop PCs will be awarded as prizes to the top three highest-scoring projects. One IBM eServer will be awarded to the corresponding university with the single student entry achieving the highest score. The contest challenges students to submit projects on the following topics: An innovative Grid open standards/architecture proposal A detailed evaluation of an existing Grid standard or implementation A proposal for proof of concept / prototype implementation / contribution to an open source Grid implementation (services, middleware components or application development tools) IBM is now accepting registrations online at www.ibm.com/university/gridchallenge. Contestants must be enrolled in an accredited two-, three- or four-year institution in the United States or Canada and must complete the online registration by March 15, 2005. All entries must be submitted online by April 08, 2005. The winners of the Challenge will be announced on or around May 10, 2005. The contest is subject to the 2005 IBM North America Grid Scholars Challenge official rules and regulations.