IBM today announced that anyone in the world with a PC, laptop or Mac and an Internet connection could help scientists seek chemical compounds that might be effective against COVID-19.
To do so, volunteers’ devices will perform small, virtual experiments to identify chemical compounds, including those in existing medicines, that could potentially be used as treatments candidates for COVID-19. Compounds that show promise for treating COVID-19 will undergo further testing and analysis.
The project, designed and led by Scripps Research, will be hosted on IBM’s World Community Grid, a trusted, crowdsourced computing resource provided at no charge for scientists. Volunteers download an app that works when their devices are otherwise idle or in light use. Operating unobtrusively in the background without slowing users’ systems, the app distributes computational assignments and returns completed calculations to researchers, all via the IBM cloud.
Volunteers need not have any special technical expertise to participate; the process is automatic. Personal information is never shared, and the software cannot access personal or business files. Please click here to sign up.
