The World Community Grid, a network of volunteer computers connected together in a grid system to solve scientific problems, has reached a milestone today by surpassing its 100,000th contributor. In other news, Marist College has signed on as the project's first university partner.

World Community Grid's mission is to provide the necessary computing muscle to complete humanitarian projects.

Grids are software engines that combine and manage computing resources from independent systems and form a virtual supercomputer. For its first project, the World Community Grid dedicated its resources to identify proteins in the Human Proteome to gain a better understanding of what causes and what can potentially cure diseases like malaria and tuberculosis.

Thus far, the idle computing power of Community Grid participants has accumulated over 8,250 years of run time and six million work units, completing in five months what would have taken a supercomputer five years to achieve.

Marist College, located in Poughkeepsie, NY, has contributed over 7,000 desktop PCs and laptops to the effort.

"Joining World Community Grid was a natural for us," said Marist College President Dennis J. Murray. "With our emphasis on technology and our commitment to serving others, we saw this opportunity as a great way to get our students directly involved in a very innovative project first hand. By joining World Community Grid, they are learning about the power of grid computing while at the same time giving back to society, which is in keeping with the Marist mission."

Researchers and scientists from around the world that are in the environmental and medical research disciplines are encouraged to submit proposals to the project for consideration. Anyone can get involved by downloading the World Community Grid's client software and registering to take part.