Research Projects and Other Programs
Distributed Computing Projects
We are currently hard at work on two important distributed
computing projects, Stanford University’s Folding@Home (our
primary research program), and UC Berkeley’s pioneering
SETI@home (which we work on in our spare time). We have considerable
computing resources dedicated to these two projects. We have
been working on these projects since the lab was founded in September
2001 -- they were our very first research projects. Read on to
find out what these projects are and why they are so important
that we started the company just to pursue them. But first...
What is distributed computing?
Distributed computing is a novel method of carrying out large
scale mathematical computations that would previously have been
impossible, or at least incredibly difficult, to complete. Even
the largest supercomputers have a difficult time solving certain
ambitious mathematical calculations. Distributed computing efforts
seek to overcome this obstacle by utilizing the surplus processing
power of millions of computers connected to the Internet to create
the equivalent of a single, massively parallel computer that
can solve in days problems that would otherwise have taken years
to finish. Through networks of dedicated volunteers, distributed
computing makes it possible for anyone, even non-scientists,
to participate in research at the frontiers of science. It will
still be some time before we realize the full potential of distributed
computing as a technique, but it is already showing great promise.
Folding@home
Folding@home is a non-profit distributed computing project
run by the Pande Group at Stanford University’s chemistry
department. The purpose of the project is to determine exactly
how protein molecules “fold” (that is, assemble themselves).
While the subject matter involves complex biophysics and chemistry
and consequently is very difficult to for the non-scientist to
understand (and for me to describe to you), the goals of the
project are not -- the results of this research could have significant
direct and indirect impact on the development of cures for diseases
such as cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.
Due to the potentially life saving importance of this project,
Craig Research Labs has dedicated the bulk of our resources to
Folding@home for the immediate future. Most of our in house computers
are running this program around the clock and we are looking
for additional volunteers to join our team and help us by running
it on their computers at home and at work. We are in the process
of purchasing additional computers to help the work get done
even faster. Join us as a volunteer by clicking here.
For updates on our efforts go to our Site
News page.
SETI@home
SETI@home is a non-profit radio astronomy project run by a
team of researchers at the University of California at Berkeley
and is of major importance to the international effort to Search
for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI). You may have heard
of SETI if you have been fortunate enough to see the film Contact
starring Jodi Foster (if you have not seen this movie, go rent
it tonight because it is one of the most inspiring movies ever
made - I guarantee you’ll enjoy it). In brief, the SETI@home
program uses hundreds of thousands of computers connected to
the Internet to analyze data collected by project SERENDIP at
the world’s largest radio telescope located in Arecibo,
Puerto Rico. The project has detected several candidate signals
which are currently being subjected to further analysis.
The SETI@home program is important not just for the science
it is doing, but also because it was the first major distributed
computing project undertaken on the Internet. It is also currently
the largest, having 3,206,963 users who have collectively contributed
697,789.650 years of computing time as of this writing (Wednesday,
August 15, 2001). The success of SETI@home has been instrumental
in helping to get many other distributed computing projects off
the ground.
Craig Research Labs has a SETI@home team which you are encouraged
to join as a volunteer by clicking here.
However, we can currently contribute only a modest amount of
our in-house computing resources to this project for the following
reasons:
-While we fully support the goals of the project (it would
be revolutionary if they actually found an extraterrestrial signal),
Craig Research Labs has finite computing resources which we have
to budget very carefully. We are dedicating most of those to
Folding@home because it more closely parallels our primary goal
of bringing about an acceleration in the pace of fundamental
scientific research than does SETI@home. The results being generated
by Folding@home are currently on the cutting edge of biological
science and will no doubt be used as a practical foundation for
a great deal of addition research by others. This will eventually
lead to innovative medical treatments for currently incurable
diseases.
-In addition, we feel that the SETI@home program is already
more than adequately empowered by its more than three million
users. In fact the folks at SETI@home have so much computing
power available to them that they recently had to rewrite their
software to make it search the telescope data more deeply because
users were sending back work units faster than the server could
generate them. However, if you wish to join our SETI@home team,
please feel free to do so.
Click to Cure Cancer
On November 8th, 2002 we launched a new "click to donate"
site to raise money for cancer research. Donations may be made
for FREE by our site visitors and are paid for by advertisers
sponsoring the program. All donations we receive through this
program are given to laboratory research departments at The
Sloan-Kettering Institute of Memorial
Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York to assist in finding
a cure for this devastating disease.
Please visit this page daily (you may use the blue button
above or the navigation links on the left hand side of any of
our pages) and help us Click to Cure Cancer!
Science Image Archive
Craig Research Labs maintains a science image archive containing
thousands of images. The contents of the archive are now available
at no charge for educational use (for example by science teachers
in their classroom activities) and may be licensed at very reasonable
rates for advertising, publishing, web design, or other commercial
uses.
Recent upgrades to our web hosting service now make it possible
for us to post the full archive online for you to browse. We
are currently understaffed and underfunded, but time permitting
I will attempt to place the archive online for our visitors sometime
in 2005.
Future Projects
We always looking for promising new science programs and innovative
technologies to fund. New research activities will be inaugurated
as permitted by the growth of our budget. If you have an idea
that you would like to suggest to us for review, please email
the director at douglascraig@craigresearchlabs.com.
|
