IBM has been awarded the prestigious Coffey International Award for its application of technical expertise in innovative ways to address the greatest societal challenges of our time at the annual Business in the Community (BITC) Awards for Excellence held on 6th July 2009. The Coffey International award recognises companies programmes that can demonstrate positive impact against one or more of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.
IBM have created the World Community Grid (WCG), in essence the virtual equivalent in processing power to a Top 10 Supercomputer. WCG harnesses the spare computing capacity of 1.3 million computers globally and makes it available for free to scientists engaged in not-for-profit, humanitarian research.
The Grid subsequently engages 460,000 volunteers in over 200 countries. For participating members, some with perhaps limited time for volunteering, it provides the opportunity through the World Community Grid to make a significant contribution to tackling the Millennium Development Goals. To date the Grid has accelerated and made research affordable on projects such as Fight AIDS, which has identified over 40 potential drug candidates in 6 months rather than 5 years and scientists are now proceeding with laboratory work to develop new drugs.
The Award was presented to Larry Hirst, Chairman IBM Europe Middle East Africa, by HRH The Prince of Wales, President of BITC, at a garden party reception hosted by The Prince at his home, Clarence House.
The judges salute IBM’s programme
Charles Duff, Corporate Development Manager, Coffey International Limited and Chair of judges said: ”The scale, significance, power and potential of World Community Grid is impressive. The judges salute IBM’s programme and hope that the recognition conferred by this award will encourage individuals everywhere to join with IBM so that more research can be completed even faster as part of this exciting, inspiring and innovative development initiative. We also challenge the business world at large to sign up to World Community Grid and help grow its potential to achieve even greater impact on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the world’s most pressing needs.“
It accelerates research breakthroughs that underpin the Millennium Development Goals.
According to Larry Hirst of IBM, “The Grid is about large scale volunteerism – utilising an individual’s unused computer capacity to address scientific problems – and in doing so accelerates research breakthroughs that underpin the Millennium Development Goals.”
World Community Grid works when an individual’s computer is on but not in active use. It performs a small piece of complex scientific research, receiving and returning the results via World Community Grid. There is no need to leave an idle computer turned on, but while it’s active and a user takes a break for even a few seconds, World Community Grid harnesses the spare capacity. The accumulation of the idle time in short spurts from millions of computers is the equivalent of one of the world’s top 10 supercomputers.
World Community Grid is operated by IBM and provided for free to support not-for-profit humanitarian research projects. In total 14 projects are currently running or have completed their computational phase, involving teams of scientists from 35 research centres in six countries. Projects cover three big topics of Nutrition – Disease – Environment. These projects are contributing to five of the eight Millennium Development Goals.
For individuals, World Community Grid helps translate interest into awareness and engagement and promotes volunteerism. This collaborative technology enables people to contribute, altruistically or for deeper personal reasons. This is evidenced by the 200-250 new members who join each day, and by the level of dialogue IBM sees in this online community.
Significant Impacts
- IBM’s World Community Grid has provided research scientists with 230,000 years of computer run-time provided at no cost, which has delivered over 250 million research results since 2004.
- In 2008, between 200 and 250 individuals joined the Grid every day (12% up on 2007), making the impossible possible and through research helping to accelerate progress toward the Millennium Development Goals.
- World Community Grid has provided significant benefits to IBM’s brand and reputation with stakeholders and in many countries employee participation exceeds 70%.
To find out more, or to volunteer your computer go to http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/
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