Become a Citizen Scientist

This course will become read-only in the near future. Tell us at community.p2pu.org if that is a problem.

Task Navigation 

Choose a Project


Choose a project that you would like to contribute to

There are many scientific projects that need the support of citizen scientists. The use of citizen-science networks often allows scientists to accomplish research objectives that would otherwise take much longer to achieve or at greater cost.

You can learn about one class of projects, called volunteer computing projects, from the website of BOINC, a popular open source platform for many volunteer computing projects. In particular, check out the BOINC list of supported projects. 

Study the list of projects carefully, and choose the one you wish you to support. Remember that when you join that project, you are not just offering computing power, you are joining a community.

When you have chosen a project share with your peers in the discussion wall what you came up with:

  1. Identify the project you have chosen to support.
  2. Explain why you chose this project.
  3. Explain how this project will benefit from your contribution.

Task Discussion


  • Red_Squall said:

    There are some fantastic projects taking place... I had a hard time choosing which one I was going to go with because of my sheer interest in everything.. I ended up choosing the Test4Theory from CERN.

    on June 2, 2013, 3:36 a.m.

  • Nicolás Carosio said:

    I began choosing a SIMAT project by BOINC (computational biology), and this is only the beginning!

    on March 1, 2013, 2:59 p.m.

  • Leonie McGlashan said:

    I chose the e0n project via Boinc. This is a chemistry project calculating the long time dynamics of systems. I'm conributing my computer for processing when I'm not using it.

    on Nov. 10, 2012, 6:31 a.m.

  • marcmars said:

    Hello again. I chose Mikyway@home as my project. I hav always been interested in astronomy. That in why this project is good for me. The physics and math involved are favorite sujects of mine.

    on Sept. 28, 2012, 3:53 a.m.

  • jopdv1 said:

    I support the poem@home cancer peptides project. It is essential to understand the fundamental workings of the known cancer peptides in order to effectively implement them in treatment for cancer patients. By supporting them I hope to help research in this area move forward in what ever modest way possible. 

    on Sept. 16, 2012, 10:16 p.m.

  • Grim said:

    The Lattice Project is the research in grid computing conducted by the Laboratory of Molecular Evolution. It can also refer to the grid computing system that is currently in production at the University of Maryland. Michael Cummings has directed The Lattice Project from its inception in late 2003 to the present, and Adam Bazinet has been the primary developer. During this time the system has been continually developed, improved, and used to complete many scientific analyses. We were initially motivated by the need for more computing power for our own research, but our development of the grid system has always been with general, non-domain-specific use in mind. In fact, the majority of our users have been other researchers throughout the world and at the University of Maryland.

    I may not be able to help much but as I learned a long time a go every little bit helps.

    "Even a single drop of rain raises the level of the ocean."

    on Sept. 6, 2012, 3:30 p.m.

  • p3m4la5 said:

     

    There are some interesting projects, but I will study it first before deciding. So as to give the maximum contribution I can give.
     
    As a stra, distrrtgen very interesting but I think Boinc translation need more help.
    on Aug. 10, 2012, 10:33 a.m.

  • Anonym said:

    As a start, I have selected FightMalaria@Home because of the significant impact of the disease in many countries and the applied nature of the research. I like that it has a immediate, tangible goal. I anticipate adding and participating in other projects once I get comfortable that I can do so without any negative side-effects. I expect these projects to benefit from having just one more node to share the load.

    on July 27, 2012, 9:53 a.m.

  • skilletsnail said:

    I chose Docking@Home because I'm all for helping to cure diseases. I can be helpful by adding my computers power to the project.

    on July 7, 2012, 5:58 p.m.

  • DnvnQuinn said:

     

    1. LHC@HOME
    2. Understanding physics is understanding the building blocks of reality. When you make a discovery in physics it translates into so many discoveries in life and the applications become endless. 
    3. My CPU cycles will go to cracking the mystery of reality. I don't see possible better use of my idle computer's power. 
    on July 5, 2012, 7:02 p.m.

  • Stone said:

    Okay I think I am starting to get the hang of this.

    I support the following projects plus many others. I support projects in medicine, mathamatics, climate prediction, physics, cosmology, astronomy, and basically any of the sciences. The following list is just a partial list of the projects I support and have running in BOINC across a number of machines.

    ABC@home  AlmereGrid Boinc Grid  Climate Prediction  Collatz Conjecture Constellation DistributedDataMining  DistrRTgen  Docking@Home  EDGeS@Home  Einstein@Home  Enigma@Home  eOn  IBERCIVIS  Leiden Classical  LHC Test4Theory@Home  LHC@Home Classic Malaria Control  Mersenne@home  MilkyWay@home  Najmanovich Research Group (NRG)  NFS@Home  NumberFields@home  POEM@HOME  Primaboinca  PrimeGrid QMC@Home  RALPH@Home  Rosetta@Home  RSA Lattice Siever (2.0)  SETI@Home  SETI@Home Beta  SIMAP  SZTAKI Desktop Grid  yoyo@home

    I have tried to put the links in for some of the projects, but it would take me a while to do it for all of them, and they can all be found on a site like BAM (http://boincstats.com/). I highly suggest using a web based management tool like BAM as it will help you find projects, make Your user ID for you on new projects, and even help you to keep track of your stats.

    Stone

    on June 12, 2012, 3:14 p.m.

    Daniel Lombraña González said:

    Well done! Challenge completed!

    on June 13, 2012, 4:04 a.m. in reply to Stone

  • KaMii said:

     

    milkyway@home - This is my main project that runs 24/7 on one machine and runs on another machine when I turn it on.  I love this project because the milkyway is our home, and we need to have a good 3 dimentional map of our home if we are ever going to start seriously exploring our home galaxy.

    Seti@home - I ran this one mainly due for testing reasons, after I had compiled BOINC from source I was getting some errors about projects not having any work.  Well I knew seti@home had tons of work to be pushed out, so I used seti@home as a testing for getting my BOINC settings properly setup.  After I got everything working, I just kept Seti@home in my BOINC_client, it is more of a background only using 20% of cpu computation.  I like the idea of SETI, I think it is important, but at the same time I wonder if it is actually a smart idea.  This gets into a huge debate and discussion, but my opinion is, Humanity is not yet at a stage to deal with an alien species.  So why reach out to others when we cannot even control ourselves?  We are way too young and immature to be messing around with this.  Again, its my opinion and probably a hot topic.  I used it because it had a huge workload so I could iron out the bugs in my BOINC configuration.

    lhc@home - The Large Hadron Collider is really cool.  It is a key step we need before SETI (IMO) more learning about physics and ourselvs.  It seems this project does not put out many work orders often, but I still contribute to it, as I feel its important.  Just to learn more and more about where we come from, what we are made of, the laws of physics, the weird and confusing side of quantum physics.  If our specis is going to survive, this is a tool and knowledge we need.  One day our sun and our planet will die, which comes first is anyones guess, but the fact is, Humanity will have to leave this planet at somepoint if we are to survive. This will help us achieve that.

    TestforTheory@home - Same reasons for lhc@home, also I used it to see if it would actually work on my system, which it does so I am happy about that!  Except for one small annoying issue, I cannot kill the vbox session once it has started, I have to login as root in a shell and issue a kill command to stop it.  This is a downside for me.

    on June 10, 2012, 12:25 p.m.

    Daniel Lombraña González said:

    Hi,

    You have chosen really interesting projects! About Test4Theory issue: we know that this issue exists and we are working on it with the official BOINC team, we will hopefully solve this problem in the coming months, so stay tuned :)

    Cheers,

    Daniel

    on June 11, 2012, 2:41 a.m. in reply to KaMii

  • DasRakel said:

    1. One is SETI@Home, and the other is World Comunity Grid.

    2. I've picked SETI because aliens are pretty cool. I have chosen WCG because humans may use my help too. I'm not completely sure about WCG, it's a bunch of seperate projects all running when the server assings them to me, the ones running now are for clean energy and clean water, sometimes it's Malaria or AIDS. 

    3. SETI needs help processing all the data their dishes collect, so they know when they've spotted another civilization. World Comunity Grid is more than one, the one about clean water wants to make drinking water by using nanotubes more efficient in design, I think what my computer does is run somekind of simulation.

    on May 13, 2012, 12:45 p.m.

    Daniel Lombraña González said:

    Good answers DasRake! The Clean Water project is really, really, interesting. However, as you have said, Aliens are important too :-)

    on May 14, 2012, 2:23 a.m. in reply to DasRakel

  • Buzzy said:

    I run almost all of the available BOINC projects. I'm also interested in the PrimeGrid prime number searches and the Enigma project, which attempts to decode the remaining undecoded German enigma machine messages from WWII.

    All of these projects are worthy of support. The WCG effort investigates important scientific issues that need addressing. PrimeGrid provides valuable mathematical data that would otherwise not be available to mathematicians, and the Enigma project is just very interesting.

    All of them will benefit from the work generated by my CPUs when they're not busy doing other work.

    on May 13, 2012, 4:57 a.m.

    Daniel Lombraña González said:

    You are are cruncher by all means :-) I like also a lot the Enigma project. Do you know the status of the latests codes to decode?

    on May 14, 2012, 2:22 a.m. in reply to Buzzy

    Buzzy said:

    Hey Daniel,

    I know that there are still some undecrypted messages available. According to the forums, the project owner is dependent on the source enigma projects to some extent and it also takes a lot of work to generate WUs. I haven't had any work in ove a month, now, but he does say that it isn't a 24/7 project, because of these factors. So I guess the work will come when it comes.

    Ciao.

    on May 15, 2012, 5:17 p.m. in reply to Daniel Lombraña González

  • Denis Ruchnewitz said:

    • Identify the project you have chosen to support
      • I have chosen to support the Test4Theory project.
    • Explain why you chose this project?
      • I chose this project because I am interested in helping to discover the basic things of our world
    • Explain how this project will benefit from your contribution?
      • I help with my CPU.
    on May 7, 2012, 12:03 p.m.

    Daniel Lombraña González said:

    Dear Denis,

    Your answers are fine too. I guess this is not your first time participating in a BOINC project, right?

    Regards,

    Daniel

    on May 9, 2012, 2:39 a.m. in reply to Denis Ruchnewitz

  • Richard said:

    • Identify the project you have chosen to support
      • I have chosen to support the Hydrogen@home project.
    • Explain why you chose this project?
      • I chose this project because I am interested in helping to make energy cleaner, safer, and efficient.
    • Explain how this project will benefit from your contribution?
      • By donating CPU time/cycles to help speed up and extend research into clean energy.
    on April 30, 2012, 2:08 p.m.

    Daniel Lombraña González said:

    Hi Richard,

    Your answers are good. Thanks for answering them!

     

    Daniel

    on May 9, 2012, 2:38 a.m. in reply to Richard

  • David said:

    1. Identify the project you have chosen to support I have chosen Test4Theory and Climate prediction 2.Explain why you chose this project? I chose these two projects because I have a interest in science problems have almost have unfathomable answers. 3.Explain how this project will benefit from your contribution? These projects will benefit by more data from people like myself contributing.
    on April 20, 2012, 5:52 p.m.

    Daniel Lombraña González said:

    Nice!! David, you have completed it very well. The only minor detail is that the next time you can use the bullet list to make your answers more readable :-)

    on April 23, 2012, 2:29 a.m. in reply to David

  • Luigi Tedone said:

    1.Identify the project you have chosen to support

     World Community Grid

    2. Explain why you chose this project?

    This is a wrapper for many project and it is sponsorized by big company; also the project is researching in many fields, especially medicine.

    3. Explain how this project will benefit from your contribution?

    I'm particular interested in The Clean Energy Project, because I think that affordable and clean energy is a priority for this century.

    on April 20, 2012, 1:38 p.m.

    Daniel Lombraña González said:

    Nice! Luigi thanks a lot for completing this challenge!

    on April 23, 2012, 2:28 a.m. in reply to Luigi Tedone

  • Mohammed Shebin M S said:

    Friends Its My First time doing this.

    I am a student.

    And I am from India.

    I would like to learn from you and help you.

    Can you help me friends?

    on April 3, 2012, 5:19 a.m.

    Daniel Lombraña González said:

    Sure! Can you start accepting one of the first challenges?

    on April 23, 2012, 2:28 a.m. in reply to Mohammed Shebin M S