The clever folks at the Vodafone Foundation Australia have partnered with the Garvan Institute of Medical Research to help speed up cancer research through their new app DreamLab.
Garvan Institute need supercomputers to do their cancer research and at the moment, they have limited access to them which hinders how much work they can do to solve the puzzle of cancer.. This is where you, your phone and a good night’s sleep come in.
All you have to do to help solve cancer research puzzles is download the DreamLab app, select what projects you want to support and how much data you want to give from your phone, pop your phone on charge and go to sleep.
The DreamLab app will then use the processing power of your idle phone that you’re donating to solve small research problems during the night.
How is this possible? Well, phones aren’t just phones anymore – they’re computers, so when they’re not being used at night all the power they’re generating goes untapped. Which means that if you get enough of them being used at the same time for good you can do amazing things.
If just 1,000 people use the DreamLab app while they sleep, cancer research will process research data 30 times faster than what the Garvan Institute can do on their own.
This app is free to sue by those on the Vodafone network in Australia if you’re using your phone data. If you use WiFi data you’ll be charged as per your WiFi plan as will others downloading the app not on the Vodafone network.
The DreamLab app is available here on the Google Play.
“There are many important research questions we’d like to ask, but some need so much computing power that it would cost too much, or take us years and years. DreamLab gives us free access to a dedicated virtual supercomputer to accelerate our cancer research, giving more hope to patients and their families. Thanks for getting involved.”
– Dr Warren Kaplan, Garvan Institute of Medical Research