World Community Grid - Important Updates


With centuries of donated computing time, volunteers have finished the computations for several popular research projects. Thank you! But there's still more work to do, as well as new projects and new features ahead!



World Community Grid proves its worth
At the beginning of the year, there were eleven projects running on World Community Grid: an all-time high. Thanks to the hours, months and years of computing time donated by volunteers like you, several projects have recently completed their work on the Grid:

  • The Help Conquer Cancer project wrapped up in May, about 2.5 years sooner than expected. The addition of GPU computations accelerated the timeframe for this project, and researchers at the Ontario Cancer Institute are already combing through the raw data provided by World Community Grid. We look forward to their publication of exciting and useful findings in the months ahead.
  • Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy – Phase 2 has been in final validation of the results for the past several months, and that process is now complete. The researchers have received the last of the results so they can begin their analysis.
  • Discovering Dengue Drugs Together – Phase 2 was a success of a different kind: researchers discovered that the computational method used for the last phase of the project was not reliably refining the screening for the best drug candidates, so they decided to take the project offline while they rethink their technique. They are, however, testing some of the compounds identified by the first phase of their drug screening. While this kind of development may seem frustrating, it’s a vital part of advancing scientific research in general and grid computing research in particular.

    In addition, two more projects, Human Proteome Folding- Phase 2 and Go Fight Against Malaria, will be finishing within the next few weeks. Both projects generated valuable data during their participation in World Community Grid. In the case of Go Fight Against Malaria, while phase 1 of the research is complete, the research team hopes to begin a second phase sometime in the future. The Human Proteome Folding project is a larger and ongoing initiative that is being closed due to governmental budget cuts. However, thanks to World Community Grid, the researchers have a vast store of completed computations - data that has been made available to and is already being used by the larger scientific community!

    The project pipeline and what’s ahead
    The World Community Grid team hasn’t been idle throughout this busy time. Even though the Grid was running a record number of projects, we have kept vetting applications for new projects to run and working behind the scenes to improve the experience for everyone involved: researchers as well as volunteers.
  • We’re happy to announce that a new project from the Ontario Cancer Institute is in the works! Stay tuned for the reveal of the project name and description later this summer! There are several other projects in the pipeline, so rest assured that you will still be able to contribute to important research.
  • To help you take advantage of more recent BOINC features, we’ll be adopting BOINC client version 7 soon. Beta testing will begin within the next few weeks, and you can expect the official announcement shortly thereafter.
  • Thousands of you responded to our volunteer questionnaire a few months ago and gave us vital insights into the present and the future of our volunteer team. We’ll be getting in touch to share the results and opinions with you, and to let you know how your responses are shaping the future of World Community Grid.
    And we have one or two surprises in store – watch this space!

    What we need from you
    We want to make sure that current volunteers like you continue to support projects that still need our help.
    Please log in to your My Projects page, review your project selections and make sure you have at least one active project selected. Better yet, consider checking these two boxes on your My Projects page:
  • "If there is no work available for my computer for the projects I have selected above, please send me work from another project."
  • "Please opt me in to new projects as they become available."

    With your help, we can continue to generate valuable research results for humanitarian efforts all over the world. Thanks for all that you’ve done. We sincerely appreciate it!