The Coffey International Award recognises companies’ programmes that have demonstrated positive impact against one or more of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.
IBM received the award for World Community Grid, an innovative linking of computers around the globe to create a system with the virtual processing power of a Top 10 Supercomputer, devoted to humanitarian research.
World Community Grid gains its power from the aggregated spare computing capacity of 1.3 million PCs belonging to 460,000 volunteers from over 200 countries. For participating members it provides the opportunity to make a significant contribution to tackling the Millennium Development Goals, and for scientists it allows them to utilise supercomputer processing power free of charge to engage in not-for-profit, humanitarian research.
Since its establishment in 2004, this venture has allowed projects such as FightAIDS@Home, Nutritious Rice for the World and Help Fight Childhood Cancer achieve significant research milestones that may not have otherwise been possible.
The award was presented to Larry Hirst, Chairman IBM Europe, the Middle East and Africa, by the President of BITC, HRH Prince Charles, at Clarence House in London.
Charles Duff, Corporate Development Manager, Coffey International Limited and Chair of judges said: “The scale, significance, power and potential of World Community Grid is impressive. IBM has collaborated with a wide spectrum of research partners and encouraged businesses, community groups and individuals to provide free computational capacity to support international humanitarian projects.
“The judges salute IBM’s programme and hope that the recognition conferred by this award will encourage individuals everywhere to join with IBM so that more research can be completed even faster as part of this exciting, inspiring and innovative development initiative. We also challenge the business world at large to sign up to World Community Grid and help grow its potential to achieve even greater impact on the Millennium Development Goals and the world’s most pressing needs.”
IBM’s Larry Hirst said: "A lot of important scientific research isn't happening. It lacks the funding for the supercomputing capacity that is needed to execute large and complex calculations. World Community Grid changes the rules. It's free and available to both public and not for profit organisations for use in humanitarian research that might not otherwise be performed.
"World Community Grid is about large scale volunteerism - utilising an individual's unused computer capacity to address scientific problems - and in doing so accelerates research breakthroughs that underpin the Millennium Development Goals. This helps to make the world a smarter, better place. At IBM we appreciate winning the BITC Coffey International Award, and it is my hope that through the award awareness will be increased, more people will join World Community Grid, and more scientists will submit research proposals."
Coffey International Limited Managing Director Roger Olds said that Coffey was delighted to sponsor this prestigious International Award as part of the Business in the Community Awards for Excellence in Corporate Responsibility.
“As a professional services organisation delivering social and physical infrastructure solutions, the Coffey vision is ‘global specialists solving emerging challenges to improve the lives of communities.’
“Our sponsorship of the award demonstrates our commitment to providing global support and advice to meet current and future challenges. I believe that the Coffey International Award has encouraged applications from across many sectors, celebrating examples of excellence from businesses that have positively impacted one or more of the Millennium Development Goals. I encourage businesses around the world to study the shortlisted examples for inspiration and insight. For those that have been successful we congratulate you on your exemplary work and trust that in the years to come your programmes will deliver even greater benefit in addressing the Millennium Development Goals.”
Three other organisations also received recognition for their work helping to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. Standard Bank Group was highly commended, while Allen & Overy LLP and The Co-operate Group were named finalists.
Other key facts about World Community Grid:
- While a computer is on but not in active use, it performs a small piece of complex scientific research, receiving and returning the results via World Community Grid. IBM does not advocate leaving computers turned on; the WCG harnesses spare capacity when computers are active and users take a short break.
- World Community Grid is operated by IBM and provided for free to support not-for-profit humanitarian research projects.
- To date, the WCG has provided research scientists will 252,000 years of computer run-time at no cost and delivered over 290 million research results since 2004.
- In total 14 projects are currently running or have completed their computational phase, involving teams of scientists from 35 research centres in six countries.
- Projects cover three big topics: nutrition, disease and environment. These projects are contributing to five of the eight Millennium Development Goals.
To find out how to get involved in World Community Grid, or to find out more, visit: www.worldcommunitygrid.org.
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Media contacts:
Diana Krause, Communications Manager, Coffey International Limited
P: (+61) (3) 9473 1300; M: (+61) 420 959 942; E: diana_krause@coffey.com
