Transcript Document

The rise of Citizen
Cyberscience
and its impact on professional
research
Dr. Miguel Angel Marquina
CERN, Switzerland
Another Slant on Open Science
Citizens vs Researchers
In Science and Innovation, can ordinary
citizens…
 Co-fund it with their own means?
 Influence (proactively) its trends?
 Participate (meaningfully) in its
progress?
Open Science & Educ.
Poland - April 13, 2012
Role of Citizen Cyberscience…
Miguel Angel Marquina
Assets in the hands of
citizens
Around the world there are...
 1000-2000 million computers and
devices alike (game consoles,
intelligent electrical appliances…)
 5000 million mobile, smartphone and
tablets – location+imaging enabled
in the hands of 7000 million humans
Open Science & Educ.
Poland - April 13, 2012
Role of Citizen Cyberscience…
Miguel Angel Marquina
Science and Innovation
Traditional approach
Sizeable infrastructures (R&D sites,
labs, universities)
 Work developed in teams
 Relevance assessed/ranked/approved
by restricted bodies of experts
 Institutional funding
 Direct impact on society may not be a
prime directive

Open Science & Educ.
Poland - April 13, 2012
Role of Citizen Cyberscience…
Miguel Angel Marquina
Science and Innovation
Imagine…
What if citizens could contribute…
 their computers
 their mobile devices
 their own brain power
to R&D projects?
Open Science & Educ.
Poland - April 13, 2012
Role of Citizen Cyberscience…
Miguel Angel Marquina
Science and Innovation
“Citizen” approach
Individual researchers may explore
novel ideas without engaging
institutional resources
 Funding based on attracting volunteers
to their cause
 Expert assessment shifts to
“Selected by popular demand”
 Impact on society – citizens drive it

Open Science & Educ.
Poland - April 13, 2012
Role of Citizen Cyberscience…
Miguel Angel Marquina
Citizen Cyberscience
Volunteer Computing
Contribution: Passive – volunteer’s CPUs
Most projects based on an open-source
platform called BOINC
http://boinc.berkeley.edu
Physics (e.g. CERN)

LHC@home

GEANT(4) studies
Sixtrack
T4T
http://cern.ch/LHCathome
700 years
44K CPUs
Interactions of particles/radiation with
matter
Popular code in Medical Physics
 GARFIELD – simulation of gas detectors
Open Science & Educ.
Poland - April 13, 2012
Role of Citizen Cyberscience…
Miguel Angel Marquina
Astrophysics

SETI@home

Einstein@home
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu
9M years
5M clients
http://einsteinathome.org
Search for sources of gravitational waves 6800 years
137K CPUs(*)
1 CPU = 1 KSfp2K = 2.8 GHz Xeon
Open Science & Educ.
Poland - April 13, 2012
Role of Citizen Cyberscience…
Miguel Angel Marquina
Life Sciences

Predictor@home
http://predictor.chem.lsa.umich.edu
Rosetta@home
http://boinc.bakerlab.org
1700 years
84K CPUs
To predict proteine structure from sequence

New proteins for cures of human diseases (HIV, malaria, cancer…)

Folding@home
http://folding.stanford.edu
Proteine (mis)folding – degenerative diseases
(Alzheimer, Huntington…)
Open Science & Educ.
Poland - April 13, 2012
Role of Citizen Cyberscience…
Miguel Angel Marquina
Geology/Climate

Climateprediction.net
http://climateprediction.net
10000 years
115K clients

Climate@home
Climate change (variant of above, non-overlapping
targets)
Open Science & Educ.
Poland - April 13, 2012
Role of Citizen Cyberscience…
Miguel Angel Marquina
Helping Developing Countries

Africa@home
http://cern.ch/africa-at-home/
African humanitarian causes
Project kick-off initiated by CERN

Malariacontrol.net

Computing for Clear Water
http://malariacontrol.net/
Malaria propagation studies (within the framework of
Africa@home)
(ref. paper)
Water flow through nanotubes – Sponsored by CCC
Open Science & Educ.
Poland - April 13, 2012
Role of Citizen Cyberscience…
Miguel Angel Marquina
Volunteer Computing
All kinds, all flavours
SCIENCE
SETI@home (BOINC)
evolution@home
eOn
climateprediction.net (BOINC)
Muon1
LHC@home (BOINC)
Einstein@Home(BOINC)
BBC Climate Change
Experiment (BOINC)
Leiden Classical (BOINC)
QMC@home (BOINC)
NanoHive@Home (BOINC)
μFluids@Home (BOINC)
Spinhenge@home (BOINC)
Cosmology@Home (BOINC)
PS3GRID (BOINC)
Mars Clickworkers
LIFE SCIENCES
Parabon Computation
Folding@home
FightAIDS@home
Übero
Drug Design Optimization Lab (D2OL)
The Virtual Laboratory Project
Community TSC
Predictor@home (BOINC)
XGrid@Stanford
Human Proteome Folding (WCG)
CHRONOS (BOINC)
Rosetta@home (BOINC)
RALPH@home (BOINC)
SIMAP (BOINC)
malariacontrol.net (BOINC)
Help Defeat Cancer (WCG)
TANPAKU (BOINC)
Genome Comparison (WCG)
Docking@Home (BOINC)
proteins@home (BOINC)
Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy (WCG)
Source: http://distributedcomputing.info/
Open Science & Educ.
Poland - April 13, 2012
MATHEMATICS AND CRYPTOGRAPHY
Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search
Proth Prime Search
ECMNET
Minimal Equal Sums of Like Powers
MM61 Project
3x + 1 Problem
Distributed Search for Fermat
Number Divisors
PCP@Home
Generalized Fermat Prime Search
PSearch
Seventeen or Bust
Factorizations of Cyclotomic Numbers
Goldbach Conjecture Verification
The Riesel Problem
The 3*2^n-1 Search
NFSNET
Search for Multifactorial Primes
15k Prime Search
ElevenSmooth
Riesel Sieve
The Prime Sierpinski Project
P.I.E.S. - Prime Internet Eisenstein Search
Factors of k*2^n±1
XYYXF
12121 Search
2721 Search
Operation Billion Digits
SIGPS
Primesearch
Lone Mersenne Hunters
Factoring
100 Million digits prefactor project
Repdigit Prime Problems
Mersenneplustwo Factorizations
Sierpinski/Riesel Base 5
SZTAKI Desktop Grid (BOINC)
Riesel Prime Search
Role of Citizen Cyberscience…
Miguel Angel Marquina
Proth Sieve
Twin Internet Prime Search
Pi Segment
Rectilinear Crossing Number (BOINC)
ABC@home (BOINC)
WEP-M+2 Project (BOINC)
distributed.net
PrimeGrid (BOINC)
M4
HashClash (BOINC)
Assault on 13th Labour
Free Rainbow Tables
IT PERFORMANCE
Gómez Performance ($)
Network Peer
NETI@home
dCrawl
DIMES
Red Library DLV
Majestic-12
Boitho
PeerFactor
DepSpid
Pingdom GIGRIB
Project Neuron (BOINC)
PUZZLES AND GAMES
ChessBrain
Chess960@home (BOINC)
FINANCIAL
MoneyBee
GStock
ART
electric sheep
Internet Movie Project
RenderFarm@Home (BOINC)
Citizen Cyberscience
Volunteer Information
Discovery
Contribution: Active - In the field
Using GPS+camera-enabled devices for
data gathering, mapping, geotagging
(often associated to Google Earth)
Information Discovery in Action
Cybermappr – http://cybermappr.unige.ch
UNOSAT/UniGe partnership in CCC,
sponsored by HP
 Used currently for geotagging of
regions under humanitarian
conflicts/crisis
 See Google group “Geotag Libya”

http://groups.google.com/group/geotag-libya
Open Science & Educ.
Poland - April 13, 2012
Role of Citizen Cyberscience…
Miguel Angel Marquina
Information Discovery in Action
EpiCollect - http://www.epicollect.net/
Framework for associating information to maps
Open Science & Educ.
Poland - April 13, 2012
Role of Citizen Cyberscience…
Miguel Angel Marquina
Information Discovery in Action
HP Gloe - http://www.hpgloe.com
Platform for location-based information discovery
Open Science & Educ.
Poland - April 13, 2012
Role of Citizen Cyberscience…
Miguel Angel Marquina
Citizen Cyberscience
Volunteer Thinking
Contribution: proactive – volunteer’s
”HPUs”
Brain power to its best
Thinking in Action
Innocentive - http://www.innocentive.com
Citizen Problem Solving (A.Bingham)
Open Science & Educ.
Poland - April 13, 2012
Role of Citizen Cyberscience…
Miguel Angel Marquina
Thinking in action
Galaxy Zoo - http://www.galaxyzoo.org/
Galaxy classification (pattern recognition)
Open Science & Educ.
Poland - April 13, 2012
Role of Citizen Cyberscience…
Miguel Angel Marquina
Thinking in action
FoldIt - http://fold.it/portal
Protein folding strategies
Open Science & Educ.
Poland - April 13, 2012
Role of Citizen Cyberscience…
Miguel Angel Marquina
Thinking in action
Old Weather - http://www.oldweather.org/

Source: http://www.climatecentral.org/news/partner-news/old-weather-data-aidsclimate-science-one-ship-at-a-time
Open Science & Educ.
Poland - April 13, 2012
Role of Citizen Cyberscience…
Miguel Angel Marquina
Citizen Cyberscience Centre
http://citizencyberscience.net
In essence
 A network to foster citizen
cyberscience worldwide, focus on
developing countries
 An open place for exchange,
collaboration
 A ”Think Tank” lab to explore new
cyberscience concepts
Open Science & Educ.
Poland - April 13, 2012
Role of Citizen Cyberscience…
Miguel Angel Marquina
Arthur C. Clarke
2001 : A Space Odyssey
“When a distinguished but elderly scientist
states that something is possible, he is
almost certainly right. When he states that
something is impossible, he is very probably
wrong.”
 “The only way of discovering the limits of the
possible is to venture a little way past them
into the impossible.”

Open Science & Educ.
Poland - April 13, 2012
Role of Citizen Cyberscience…
Miguel Angel Marquina