Leadership, Community And Values Initiative
RESOURCES
Using the Tools at Hand
Ethan Owens, a Help Desk 2 Technical Supervisor for Housing and Food Services, discusses how his idea of donating computer time launched the program Rosetta@home.
In 2004, I proposed donating the excess computing power of HFS workstations to research. My proposal was well received and supported, and within a year, Rosetta@home was launched on all 200 HFS computers. A few months later, news of the project hit the Internet. Today, over 100,000 users are donating computer time to the project and combine to outperform the 5th most powerful dedicated supercomputer in the world. Due to my work with Rosetta@home, I was nominated for the UW Distinguished Staff Award.
I first learned about donating computer time in 1998. During my time as an astronomy major, I was exposed to a simulation setup similar to one used at UC Berkeley. Through my various roles, either as a student or, later, as an employee of the University, I gained an understanding of distributed computing (a term used to describe many remote machines to work on a single project). This provided me with hands-on experience which equipped me for the future role I would play as a manager of all of HFS’s computers. Since I have a department full of computers with excess power at my disposal, I decided to put all these components to work. One resource that greatly aided me in this process was the full support of the IT and HFS Directors. Their support, combined with my motivation and my desire to utilize the available resources, provided a great foundation for Rosetta@home.
