Case study Africa@home

1. Case studyAfrica@home Prof. Christian R. Pellegrini with: François Grey / CERN Ben Segal / CERNAsia@home workshop, Academia Sinica,16-17 April 2009, Taiwan

2. Overview • Prehistory of Africa@home • WhatisAfrica@home? • Africa@home first phase • Malariacontrol.net • Volunteerthinking • Africa@home second phase • AfricaMap

3. Prehistory of Africa@home • Spin-off of fundamental research at CERN • Related to technologies developed for the LHC particle accelerator • Sixtrack a program to study the beam stability was well suited to volunteer computing • LHC@home a volunteer computing application for the 50th anniversary of CERN • Big success: 6'000 users after one week

4. From particle physics to malaria • After CERN's involvement in WSIS in Geneva (2003) outreach project for WSIS in Tunis (2005) • Goal: present a practical implementation of volunteer computing for Africa • The idea of Africa@home was born • Which suitable application ??? • Porting of STI's MalariaControlepidemiological simulation program to volunteer computing environment.

5. What is Africa@home Dealing with the digital divide • Huge potential for volunteer computing to contribute to solving pressing health and environmental issues facing the developing world. • Africa@home provides a common framework for volunteer computing projects that address African needs. • An important goal of Africa@home is to involve African students, scientists and institutions in the development and running of these volunteer computing projects.

6. This is Africa@home • A shell to host computational models • Action-oriented, interdisciplinary project • Broaden the epidemiological studies of diseases (HIV/AIDS, Malaria, TB, …) • Combine large-scale simulations with real data from the field to improve models • Novel partnership between academic institutions, international organizations and NGOs • Hosting of volunteer computing projects in Africa • Empower African universities • Join International Research • Involve African universities in the development process

7. Africa@home: first phase • Porting of MalariaControl to BOINC platform • Project team involves 3 students from Geneva, Bamako and Yaoundé • Funded by Geneva International Academic Network, hosted at CERN • Port took 3 months, beta-test February 2006, open to public July 2006 • Server at University of Geneva

8. MalariaControl.net

9. Volunteers: 25’000 total, 10’000 active Sign up rate: up to 400 new users per day Currently no new users Host PCs: 15,000 active, 85% Windows, 15% Linux, Mac CPU power: 10 TeraFLOPS equivalent to 3,000 CPU years/yr (midrange PCs) delivered to date 10,000 CPU years (Oct 08) Simulations per day: 75,000 …+ huge public/press interest! MalariaControl.net statistics

10. Impact in Africa

11. Africa@home: second phase • Named "Volunteer Computing for Africa" • Continue to involve African scientists and institutions in hosting, porting and developing volunteer computing projects for African humanitarian needs. • Africa@home workshop • More than 50 African scientists from 20 countries • Africa@home new applications • STDSIM with Erasmus Medical Centre, Rotterdam • HIVMM with SACEMA, South Africa • ”Autodock4” with the WISDOM collaboration • ”AfricaMap” with UNOSAT • Africa@home servers: Uni. Cape Town, Uni. Geneva • WHO is an official partner

12. Africa@home workshop • Workshop at AIMS (African Institute for Mathematical Sciences), Muisenberg-Cape Town, 16-22 July, 2007.

13. Africa@home & WISDOM collaboration • Aim: deploying WISDOM Autodock4 software as a volunteer computing application managed by Africa@home • Accelerating research against a malaria target • Increasing IT knowledge in Africa • Preparing a joint deployment on a volunteer computing grid and a grid infrastructure • Partners: • Africa@home: CERN, ICV, Peter Amoako-Yirenkyi (Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana) and EloiAppora-Gnékindy (University of Bangui, Central African Republic) • WISDOM consortium: HealthGrid, CNRS, University of Modena, Mahidol University (Thailand) • Contact with the ThaiGrid infrastructure for deploying WISDOM on the same target • Contact with WHO and World Community Grid (IBM)

14. Volunteerthinking: future trend in VC • Distributed thinkingvs. distributed computing • Example:Stardust@home Jan 2006: Stardust spacecraft returns interstellar dust particles to Earth The microscopic particles are embedded in a piece of aerogel Microscope images of aerogel distributed to hundreds of volunteers using BOINC Volunteers download a ‘virtual microscope’, learn how to find particles Only about 45 particles in whole aerogel = 45 ants on football field Volunteers who find particles will become co-authors of scientific papers

15. BOSSA • BOSSA is a new platform developed by the BOINC team led by David Anderson at SSL, Berkeley. • It supports volunteer computing applications involving personal intervention by the volunteer. • The AfricaMap application runs on BOSSA

16. Project partner: UNOSAT Goal: Implement a distributed framework for satellite image annotation. UNOSAT is a United Nations programme created to provide the international community and developing countries with enhanced access to satellite imagery and Geographic Information System (GIS) services. These tools are used mainly in humanitarian relief, disaster prevention and post crisis reconstruction AfricaMapcartography from satellite images

17. AfricaMapan up to date geodatabase Volunteers identify roads, bridges, rivers, human settlements, cultures and geo features Servers in UCT and UniGE

18. AfricaMap status • Design: BOINC server to distribute compressed images to clients • client applications either Java Script • or BOINC client applications • Project Status: • Phase 1 about to finish: • porting the image compressor to a Desktop Grid at UNOSAT

19. Who are the volunteers?

20. Africa@home partners Core Partners European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) International Conference Volunteers (ICV) Informaticiens sans Frontières (ISF) Swiss Tropical Institute (STI) University of Geneva, Computer Science Dept. World Health Organization (WHO) Associated Partners AgenceUniversitaire de la Francophonie (AUF) Erasmus University Medical Center, The Netherlands SACEMA, Stellenbosch University, South Africa African Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Muisenberg, South Africa University of Bamako, Mali University of Dakar, Senegal University of Yaoundé, Cameroon UN Operational Satellite Applications, UNOSAT Sponsor Geneva International Academic Network (GIAN)

21. Media coverage • Africa@home received a large media coverage: • Vosordinateurspeuvent aider la luttecontre la malaria, Le Monde • Tapping computer power to fight malaria, Swissinfo • Fight malaria with your home computer, New Scientist • Donating computing power to fight malaria, Cordis(EU News) • Volunteer computing to study malaria’s spread, SciDev.Net • Votreordinateurpeut aider la recherchesur le paludisme, Le Progrès • Fighting malaria with computers, Daily India.com • Fight Against Malaria in Africa: Put your computer to work, Medical News Today • CERN’s Africa@home asks people to volunteer their computers to battle malaria in Africa, Science Spectrum • Africa@home, BBC News Digital Planet • Wanted: computers for a humanitarian cause, Nature • Coming down to Earth: Linking up computers to defeat malaria, The Economist • CERN launches Africa@home Project, GridToday • Fighting Malaria in Africa From Your Home Computer, Voice of America • Malaria Battlers Enlist Power of Your PC, National Geographic

22. Acknowledgements Africa@home is a team effort and the following persons deserve acknowledgements: François Grey, Ben Segal, Nicolas Maire,Christian Stroestrup, Jacques Fontignie,RanaivoRazakanirina, BakarySagara,William Kandel, Silvano de Genaro, Viola Kreps,Peter Amoako-Yirenkyi , EloiAppora-Gnékindy

23. “The road to development starts with digging the foundations of Science and building a competitive infrastructure for Research” Thankyou for your attention.