Screensaver for FightAIDS@Home, a World Community Grid project.

"World Community Grid allows scientists to run computational research for free, and we do the work of getting them on the grid," says Project Manager Bill Bovermann. "Any scientist from anywhere in the world can submit a proposal, and as long as they meet our requirements they will have a gigantic supercomputer available to them."

Projects submitted to World Community Grid must come from a non-profit organization, be adaptable to run in a grid environment, directly benefit humanity, and the results must be made available to the public. Once a proposal is submitted, it goes through an extensive internal review by IBM, and if successful, the work of getting it to run on the grid begins. IBM has a multi-person team dedicated to working on World Community Grid, and for Bovermann, the team's leader, it's been a unique experience.

"I'm a professional project manager," he explains. "Someone hands me the specs for a project, any kind of project, and I come in and make everything work. When I'm finished, I usually just go on to the next project. This is the first time I've worked on a project where the results can really benefit humanity, and it's been uniquely satisfying."

The team is currently hard at work preparing the next set of research projects, submitted from around the world, that will run on World Community Grid infrastructure. In the queue for later this year is a genome project and a muscular dystrophy project. Five more projects will start up in 2007: two dealing with cancer research; one on climate prediction; one modeling better types of rice; and a third protein folding project.

"I have six computers and World Community Grid runs on all of them," says Bovermann. "We're very proud of all of the projects, and we're working to get researchers to be more aware of our grid so that they can submit more projects to us."

Learn more at the World Community Grid Web site.