Clemson School of Computing boasts World Community Grid's top ranked university team, logging an impressive 221-plus years of run time and returning more than 304,000 research results to benefit humanity. The school, part of Clemson University in South Carolina, offers undergraduate and graduate degree programs in a variety of computer science fields.

World Community Grid sat down with Dr. Sebastien Goasguen, Assistant Professor and captain of the school's team, to learn more about their invaluable contributions.

WCG: How did you hear about World Community Grid?
SG: We had a computing seminar here at Clemson a year ago, and one of the students, Dru Sepulveda, did a terrific presentation on BOINC and World Community Grid. In September 2007, I attended the 8th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Grid Computing and saw a poster featuring World Community Grid. So it was the combination of these two that brought World Community Grid to my attention.

WCG: Why did you become involved in World Community Grid?
SG: Grid computing is all about resource sharing and maximizing utilization. When machines are turned on, it's such a waste if they are not doing anything. If we don't have work to do locally, we should be helping other projects. We chose World Community Grid because it allows us to give back to the community and give back to the world.

WCG: You have a relatively small team of 44 members. How have you managed to log so much run time?
SG: Prior to joining World Community Grid in January 2007, we deployed Condor, middleware for grid computing, on all Windows machines across campus with the help of our central IT organization (CCIT). While we are not a large team, we are smart! Thanks to Dru Sepulveda's hard work, as well as two staff members, Nell Kennedy and Matt Rector, we linked all 2,000 machines from our various departments to World Community Grid, so that when we don't have work to do locally, we do work on a humanitarian project.

WCG: Are any efforts under way to sign up more Clemson students for World Community Grid?
SG: We are trying to engage more students to grow the size of the team – and more importantly, our contribution. We recently put out a press release to attract students and alumni, which is posted on the Clemson web site; an announcement will also be published in an internal newsletter.

WCG: What would you say is unique about this project?
SG: There are lots of grid computing projects out there that we could join, but if you look at the ones that are the most useful, World Community Grid stands out. Its humanitarian focus touches everybody - even if you are not computer-oriented. Clemson has a goal of being one of the top 20 public universities in the nation, so being first with World Community Grid is a great contribution!

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