Save lives when your PC is idle

If you're as old as me, you'll remember fiddling with the screensaver on your PC; Spending ages trying to find a cool set of patterns or writing jokey messages. However, in 2005, I discovered that my screensaver could actually be useful by installing the World Community Grid, developed by IBM.

World Community Grid (WCG) is an effort to create the world's largest public computing grid to tackle scientific research projects that benefit humanity.[4] Launched on November 16, 2004, it is co-ordinated by IBM with client software currently available for Windows, Linux, macOS, and Android operating systems.1

The application uses the idle time of your computing device to work on scientific problems. By sharing this processing across so many computers around the world, scientists have done millions of years worth of computing.

On April 1st, 2020, IBM announced OpenPandemics - COVID-19. The project aims to identify possible treatments for the Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) which is responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic. WCG will partner with Scripps Research, with whom it has partnered in the past, notably in FightAIDS@Home projects. The project will run on CPUs and eventually GPUs and will also serve to create a "fast-response, open source tool that will help all scientists quickly search for treatments for future pandemics."1

Click here to learn more or to sign up.