Genevieve Roberts

WHAT do doctors, alien enthusiasts and you and I have in common? We can all play a crucial role in discovering cures for diseases. While some of the above may not have the expertise – or, indeed, brain power – to make scientific discoveries for themselves, all of our computers and mobile phones can help researchers while we sleep.

The World Community Grid (WCG) is a virtual supercomputer, created by millions of home computers worldwide. It is tackling problems from childhood brain cancer to Aids, water purification to more efficient solar power. Now, the grid is helping to find a cure for Ebola. And anyone can take part by signing up and creating an account for their PC or mobile phone, choosing projects and downloading the revelant software.

Stanley Litow, president of the IBM International Foundation, was part of the team who came up with the WCG concept 10 years ago. Their somewhat unusual inspiration came from those aforementioned extraterrestrial enthusiasts.

“We saw a project asking people to donate power from their PCs to find out more about aliens,” Litow says. “In our citizenship project we started asking, ‘What is the potential of this technology? Could we do something similar that would have real social impact?’” So they developed the humanitarian grid.

While alien-spotters who joined the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (Seti) may have found their research results disappointing, their idea is likely to prove a crucial con- NETWORKING: Stanley Litow, President of the IBM foundation