Les liaisons fructueuses - RUIG-GIAN

V – Eclairages | Témoignage
driving force for putting science
on the agenda in WSIS.
In early 2005, A CERN colleague
Silvano de Gennaro,
who also heads an NGO
called Informaticiens sans
Frontières, approached me
with the idea of an outreach
project, which would involve
a practical implementation of
Grid computing for Africa,
to be produced for the next
phase of WSIS that autumn.
Based on our positive experience
with LHC@home,
Ben and I proposed a similar
project, which we dubbed Africa@home.
Page d’accueil du site Internet Africa@home.
BOINC platform in time for the anniversary festivities,
so the public could participate in LHC@
home. The public response was overwhelming, with
nearly a thousand people signing up to download
the LHC@home software within 48 hours of the
project being made open to the public. Within a
week, we had reached some 6000 participants, and
were obliged to close the project to further volunteers,
for fear of swamping our server. Over the last
three years, LHC@home has provided the accelerator
physicists with more than 3000 processor-years
of computing power, in other words the equivalent
of a cluster of more than 1000 computers running
non-stop, which they could never have afforded
otherwise.
From particle accelerators to malaria epidemiology
The impetus for Africa@home came originally from
CERN’s involvement in the World Summit for the
Information Society (WSIS). CERN was a major
For this, we needed a suitably
relevant application. Discussions
with Tom Smith and
his computing expert and
Ph.D. student Nicolas Maire
at the Swiss Tropical Institute confirmed that they
were keen to use volunteer computing in order to
access much more computer power for their MalariaControl
epidemiological simulation program. This
program was designed to provide a detailed description
of all parameters that affect the transmission of
malaria in Africa, in order to accurately simulate the
effects of new forms of treatment such as vaccines.
Silvano approached CERN’s Director General, who
gave explicit support for us to work on the Africa@
home project. But he did this with the proviso that
CERN provide no direct funding. We estimated that
with a team of four students, we could get the STI
application running on BOINC in a few months.
But even idealistic young students need to eat ! So
we needed to find some funding.
Also, we felt strongly that we should involve African
researchers directly in the project. Silvano had worked
with another NGO, ICVolunteers, also based in Geneva,
and recommended them as a partner with an
excellent network in Africa. Viola Krebs of ICVolun-
204