Interestingly, for a company that prides itself on using specialist knowledge, passion and commitment to improve the lives of communities around the world, this is an initiative that has not required any additional work for Coffey, but has the potential to bring enormous benefit to society.
When Coffey employees are on breaks, their idle computers become powerful research tools, helping to solve the world’s most pressing health, societal and environmental problems as part of the World Community Grid project. By pooling unused computer processing power, World Community Grid is making technology available to public and not-for-profit organisations that might otherwise not be completed due to the high cost of computer infrastructure required.
This grid joins together hundreds of thousands of individual computers, creating a large system with massive computation power. For beneficiaries of the initiative, this can condense research studies that would have taken years down to months or even weeks and enables work that would not have been attempted without access to this powerful computing grid to occur. Over 420,500 years of computer run time have been contributed towards research to date from all participating organisations and individuals.
Coffey was introduced to the World Community Grid via our sponsorship of the Coffey International Award, which is presented annually by the Business in the Community (BITC) association. The award recognises company programs that demonstrate positive impact on the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. In 2009, IBM was the award winner for the World Community Grid for its application of technical expertise in innovative ways to address the greatest societal and environmental challenges of our time.
Coffey computers are helping to solve current projects on the World Community Grid, from conquering cancer, fighting AIDS, finding cures for dengue fever and muscular dystrophy, computing for clean water and clean energy and human proteome folding. Employees can even click on a link to identify which projects their computer is currently working on.
In the six months that World Community Grid has been running on the Coffey network, 23 years and 2 days of runtime has been generated from approximately 1200 computers, providing a huge boost to research efforts.
Chris Bird, Coffey’s chief information officer, said, “I’m so proud that Coffey has partnered with World Community Grid. By harnessing the idle processing time from our computers, we can help to reduce research time from years into weeks without impacting the performance of our systems or people.”
Bettina Cutler from IBM Corporate Citizenship and Corporate Affairs said, “After winning the BITC Coffey International Award in 2009, IBM is delighted that Coffey has taken the next step and joined us as a partner that’s making a difference. Coffey is now our largest corporate contributor in Australia.”
In addition to Australia, Coffey has also deployed this project in other regions including North America, Europe and New Zealand.
Coffey managing director, Roger Olds, has called upon other companies to join the program and donate their unused computer time to the World Community Grid, “This is a fantastic opportunity to give back to the community and contribute to valuable research projects, that otherwise, may not be possible.”
Media contacts
Prue Bowley, External Communications Manager, Coffey
T: +61 8 8375 4400; M: +61 401 515 801, E: prue_bowley@coffey.com
Bernard O’Brien, Global Manager Marketing and External Communications, Coffey
T: +61 2 8404 4426; M: +61 414 850 779; E: bernard_obrien@coffey.com
