Computer scientist develops volunteer computing network

Computing is power, and Travis Desell is effectively harnessing all the power he can.

Desell, a faculty member in Computer Science , is researching and developing volunteer computing programs that take advantage of the world’s ever-improving computing and networking capabilities.

He’s focusing his efforts on volunteer computing because it competes well with the world’s fastest supercomputers. It is a form of distributed computing where a computing application is shared among a potentially unlimited number of computers over the Internet. A client program runs on the volunteered computer when it is not being used by its owner and returns resulting computations to the server program. The server manages the work by creating and sending jobs to the client computers and organizing the results.

Desell knows this kind of project intimately. He worked on Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s MilkyWay@home–a volunteer computing resources project—using the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing system. He’s adapting MilkyWay@home to fit research needs at UND. Desell also is using his experience from that project to build DNA@home, another volunteer computing project for use by researchers at UND.

MilkyWay@Home uses evolutionary algorithms such as differential evolution, genetic search, and particle swarm optimization—complex problem-solving programs inspired in part by the social behavior of bird flocking or fish schooling—to create an accurate three-dimensional model of the Milky Way galaxy (where our Solar System lives).

DNA@home employs statistical sampling methods in an attempt to discover transcription factors, the on/off gene regulators, between genes in DNA. The current goal is to understand the tuberculosis genome and the genome of Yersinia pestis, the bacteria that cause plague.

“The scientific computing Ph.D. here at UND is very young,” Desell said. “Collaboration is essential to scientific computing. Our Ph.D. students need to be able to work with other scientists who have demanding computational problems.”

This is where volunteer computing project resources could play a vital role.

“I feel that it is very important to extend volunteer computing research to other institutions,” Desell said. “This will broaden possibilities for our students to work with researchers on large scale multi-university projects and increase opportunities for grant funding. I especially want the community and North Dakota’s K-12 education system to get involved in volunteer computing. This is a great way to for students and the public to not only learn about the cutting-edge research here at UND but also become an active participant in this science.”