By: Alanna Shaikh

Cool thing number one: The World Community Grid Dengue Fever Project

The world community grid uses excess computer capacity to solve major human problems. It joins together lots of individual computers to achieve massive computational powers. (Seriously, the website uses that exact phrase – massive computational powers.) Pretty much everyone with a computer can participate; you just register and download their software to link in. From there, your computer will communicate with their servers when it is idle to receive small computing tasks and send back solutions.

You can pick which of their projects you want to donate your computer’s time to support. The dengue fever project is attempting to discover promising drug candidates for Dengue, Hepatitis C, West Nile, Yellow Fever, and other related viruses that are part of the Flaviviridae family. It has already completed phase 1, which looked at about three million small drug-like molecules to find candidates likely to respond strongly to virus components. Phase two will sift through the phase 1 likely candidates.

Getting involved in global health can be frustrating. So often all you can do is donate money to organizations, push your government to donate money, and raise money. This is a chance to do something different in support of global health, something a little more direct. For more information about the dengue project, see their FAQ. (Their forums are also a lot of fun to read; it’s clear that for some people monitoring the World Community Grid is a satisfying hobby.) Continue reading →