AIMS workshop on Volunteer Computing
16-22 July, 2007
http://africa-at-home.web.cern.ch/africa-at-home/workshop.html
Closing date for applications: 15 May 2007

Project details

The AIMS workshop on Volunteer Computing for Africa will introduce
participants to state-of-the-art open source software technologies
behind distributed computing and cyber-volunteerism on the Internet.
Participants will gain hands-on experience with these technologies, so
that they can harness the power of volunteer computers worldwide for
their own research or to support research of their colleagues in
universities and research labs across Africa. Volunteer computing is a
new and rapidly growing trend that can help in efforts to tackle some of
the major humanitarian challenges faced by Africa, and can also bridge
the digital divide by putting African researchers at the centre of
international humanitarian projects.

How to apply

Application forms are available at the [ ICVolunteers ] page, and should
be sent in by May 15th.
[ http://www.icvolunteers.org/index.php?what=projectscalendar&id=273 ]

Applications should include a CV and suitable academic recommendations
to assist selection. Students should have programming experience and be
familiar with both Linux and Windows environments. Preference will be
given to candidates who will be able to return to their home institutes
and teach and apply the technology there.

Travel expenses, board and lodging will be paid for all students
accepted. Some assistance can be given for visa applications to South
Africa for the duration of the workshop. Please allow sufficient time
for visa formalities.

Background

The workshop will focus on the most popular platform for volunteer
computing today, BOINC, which stands for Berkeley Open Infrastructure
for Network Computing. BOINC allows volunteer computers in homes and
offices to run computer-intensive simulation programs such as
MalariaControl.net, developed by researchers at the Swiss Tropical
Institute. This was made possible through the multi-stakeholder
partnership called Africa@home, which involves CERN, the University of
Geneva, the World Health Organization, several African academic
institutions, the Swiss Tropical Institute, ICVolunteers and
Informaticiens sans frontières (ISF), with the support of the Geneva
International Academic Network (GIAN).

The first phase of Africa@home (2005 and 2006) was an opportunity to
help the Swiss Tropical Institute obtain the needed computer power to
run their malaria modelling program called MalariaControl.net.

Since day one of the Africa@home project, it has involved African
researchers in the different aspects of the project, aiming to
ultimately build poles of expertise in different parts of Africa
(involving to date cyber-volunteers from Mali, Senegal, South Africa,
Cameroon, Centre Afrique, Tanzania, Spain and Switzerland).

The objective of the second phase of Africa@home is to use the BOINC
technology for other computer applications, such as those linked to
research about HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis.

It is in this context that a workshop will be organized at the African
Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) in Muizenberg (Cape
Province), from 16 to 22 July 2007.

Workshop Program

Monday 16 July: Introduction to the general aspects of volunteer
computing, relevance to different scientific tasks, and client side of
volunteer computing .

Tuesday 17 July: Objective is for participants to familiarise themselves
with a number of open source components used to run volunteer computing
servers.

Wednesday 18 July: Objective is step by step walk through of building
client and server, including typical debugging issues .

Thursday 19 July: Analyse and plan porting of a new project to volunteer
computing.

Friday 20 July: Review and test knowledge acquired during workshop, get
feedback on suitability of workshop format, discuss next steps for
participants.

Sat-Sun 21-22 July: Debriefing with AIMS, planning of future activities
with AIMS, SACEMA and other Africa@home partners.


--
.~.
/V\ Jan Groenewald
/( )\ www.aims.ac.za
^^-^^