From Outsmart Ebola Together at WCG: “Summer Plans for Outsmart Ebola Together”

9 Jul 2016
Dr. Erica Ollmann Saphire, PhD
The Scripps Research Institute

Summary
In this brief update, Dr. Erica Saphire talks about the continuing need for research on the Ebola virus, and the search for funding to help analyze the data generated so far by World Community Grid volunteers.

Access mp4 video here .

As of June 2016, the World Health Organization (WHO) reports that there have been more than 28,000 cases of the Ebola virus in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, with more than 11,000 deaths. While WHO has declared that the most recent outbreak has ended, most researchers and public health experts believe that it is only a matter of time before another Ebola virus outbreak occurs. Sudan virus and Marburg virus, two diseases that are related to the Ebola virus, can also cause severe hemorrhaging and have high potential for outbreaks. Lassa virus also causes similar symptoms and is endemic, causing thousands of cases every year in Western Africa.

For these reasons, our research is crucial to helping contain future disease outbreaks. In order to move more rapidly towards laboratory testing of the most promising compounds screened on World Community Grid, we are looking for funding to hire an additional lab member that would be shared between our lab and the Olson Laboratory here at The Scripps Research Institute. This person would help with data analysis for Outsmart Ebola Together and Fight AIDS@Home and would also help prepare the future targets for Ebola and related diseases for us to explore using World Community Grid.

Funding is always an issue in scientific research, and resources are becoming more scarce for science throughout the world. But Outsmart Ebola Together remains a top priority for my lab, and our work will continue. We are very grateful to the many volunteers who continue to contribute to this project. We look forward to announcing receiving funding for a new position in the future!

See the full article here.

You can help stamp out EBOLA.
Visit World Community Grid (WCG). Download and install the BOINC software on which it runs. Attach to the Outsmart Ebola Together project. This will allow WCG to use your computer’s free CPU cycles to process computational data for the project.

While you are at WCG and BOINC, check out the other very worthwhile projects running on this software. All project results are “open source”, free for the use of scientists world while to advance health and other issues of mankind.

Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

“World Community Grid (WCG) brings people together from across the globe to create the largest non-profit computing grid benefiting humanity. It does this by pooling surplus computer processing power. We believe that innovation combined with visionary scientific research and large-scale volunteerism can help make the planet smarter. Our success depends on like-minded individuals – like you.”

WCG projects run on BOINC software from UC Berkeley.

BOINC is a leader in the field(s) of Distributed Computing, Grid Computing and Citizen Cyberscience.BOINC is more properly the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing.

CAN ONE PERSON MAKE A DIFFERENCE? YOU BET!!

“Download and install secure, free software that captures your computer’s spare power when it is on, but idle. You will then be a World Community Grid volunteer. It’s that simple!” You can download the software at either WCG or BOINC.

Please visit the project pages-

FightAIDS@home Phase II

OpenZika