Ibercivis

Name: IBERCIVIS – Volunteer computing project

Description:

Ibercivis is citizen computation platform that allows society to participate on scientific research in a direct way and in real time. It’s a leading Iberian project that intends to involve the maximum number of citizens in volunteer computing. It uses the calculation capacity of the computer in idle moments to carry out tasks derived from an investigation project.

Ibercivis brings the citizens closer to leading investigations and makes them participant in the science making process. At the same time, it provides the scientific community with a powerful calculation tool. The computer turns into an open window to science, creating a channel for the direct dialog between researchers and society. Ibercivis is geared towards any person or collective (associations, educative centres, public institutions, enterprises…) that wants to join the project. A computer connected to internet is the only thing needed.

Once you have installed the software in yout computer, each time your computer is idle, it will make calculations for leading investigations and it will send them in a transparent and secure manner to a server, in order to be analyzed by researchers. Whenever this happens, a screensaver will be activated and you will know when your computer is working for Ibercivis.

Activities:

The idea is to present a desktop grid infrastructure. Describe the whole thing: relevance of simmulations in e-science, scientific workflow (from theory to commercialization of a drug, for instance). Present virtually the control room of the computing infrastructure: servers, services, real-time workflow, loads… Schools should install BOINC so that a real time experiement can be don: 1. preparing a buch of workunits to be sent to each school, 2. calculate them in real time in the PCs, 3. compile results 4. visualize (for instance a trajectory of a particle of fusion, or the position of a drug in a protein).

Example:

A video showing Amyloid application used for drug research with the help of volunteer computing.