Helping Change the World, One Computer at a Time
The University of Saskatchewan has recently become a partner in World Community Grid—a global humanitarian effort to harness unused computing power and direct it towards research designed to help address the world’s most difficult health and societal problems.
World Community Grid was launched by IBM in November 2004 with the goal of creating the world’s largest public computing grid to benefit humanity. Only research conducted by public and not-for-profit organizations is accepted by World Community Grid. Progress on critical health issues, such as HIV/AIDS and cancer, as well as environmental and hunger issues, has already been achieved.
Members of the U of S community are encouraged to contribute their idle computer time to assist humanitarian research by joining World Community Grid and becoming a member of the University of Saskatchewan team.
“World Community Grid takes advantage of a computer’s idle time—such as when we’re in a meeting or off for lunch or coffee—and puts those unused cycles to good use,” says Rick Bunt, CIO and Associate Vice-President, Information and Communications Technology. “By joining, individuals can help make a difference on a global scale with very little effort. We can even select which current projects we want our computers to work on.”
By becoming a partner in World Community Grid, the U of S is joining the IBM Corporation and a group of more than 400 companies, associations, foundations, nonprofits, government agencies and academic institutions. The U of S is the second Canadian university to join.
Learn more about World Community Grid and Join the U of S Team.