IED Donates the Computing Power of Its PCs to Rosetta@home

MILAN, May 4, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

BLOCKCHAIN FOR LIFE: A New Way for Supporting Medical Research 

IED: "If all companies joined us, we could create the most extensive non-profit support to research"

Medical research investments have never been more than 1.75% of the GWP. (source: R&D Funding Forecast). 

Distributed computing is a type of technology that allows a safe and costless sharing of a pc's computing power by using a certified software. It represents a concrete support to research, because it can help reduce the researchers' working time by solving complex data that in normal cases might take years to be processed.

"Time is essential for treating any illness," underlines Corrado Musso, Manager of the Neuro-surgery department at Humanitas Gavazzeni in Bergamo. 

BLOCKCHAIN FOR LIFE, is a project promoted by Y&R Italia in cooperation with IED - Istituto Europeo del Design. At the end of the day, when all teaching activities are finished, the Milan based Design College offers the power and processing-time of its PCs, for scientific means. For over a month, thanks to an open source software (BOINC: Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing), IED's PCs have been working every night for Rosetta@home, an America research institute studying the three-dimensional structure of proteins and their interaction. IED is the first university in the world that has decided to install this software and offer its computing power for cause-related means.

Rosetta@home was not a casual choice. In fact, the results of their research can be fundamental for discovering which proteins might be useful for the treatment of numerous diseases like AIDS, Cancer, Malaria or Alzheimer's Disease.

"Young people are the centre of our world, we prepare them for their professional future but we believe that we must also do more to try to improve their lives, and everybody's life. For this reason, we chose to take part in BLOCKCHAIN FOR LIFE by making available our technological resources, i.e. our computers. Supporting research with BLOCKCHAIN FOR LIFE is costless. If all companies joined us, donating to a cause the unused time of their computers, we could create the largest charity chain, giving research a power never seen before. And this might really change somebody's life." These are the words of Elena Sacco, Director of the Communication Department of IED Milano.