Gifts of Computing Power Aid Cancer Research

By NICOLE WALLACE

The Compute Against Cancer campaign lets computer users donate their machines’ unused processing power to cancer-research efforts.

Parabon Computation is a company in Fairfax, Va., that takes large research problems and divides them into much smaller tasks that individual computers can process. The company’s Frontier technology then assigns and distributes the tasks via the Internet to personal computers that process the assignments.

Computer users join the Parabon network by downloading the company’s Pioneer software from its Web site. The software functions like a screen saver, activating and working on computational assignments only when the computer is otherwise idle.

The company is currently using the computational power that its technology harnesses to assist scientists conducting cancer research. The first study to benefit from the program analyzes data to determine how to reduce the side effects of chemotherapy.

Steven Armentrout, president and founder of Parabon, says that, in addition to furthering important research, philanthropic projects like Compute Against Cancer help his company demonstrate the capabilities of its Frontier technology.

He adds: “It’s a big win in terms of the philanthropic aspect, because you’re able to donate something that’s being wasted otherwise — and it’s so effortless.”

This fall, when Parabon starts to sell computational resources to commercial clients, computer users who are part of the Parabon network will be able to choose either to receive payment for the processing power their computers provide or to donate that money to charity.

To get there: Go to http://www.parabon.com/cac.jsp.