Michael Weber presenting Rechenkraft.net - From Volunteers to Scientists, at the Citizen Cyberlab Summit, 17-18 September 2015, University of Geneva (UNIGE).

1. Rechenkraft.net –
From Volunteers to Scientists
Citizen Cyberlab Summit, Geneva/Switzerland, Sept. 17th 2015
Dr. Michael H.W. Weber
President, Rechenkraft.net e.V.
Guest Scientist, Botanical Garden of Philipps-University of Marburg / Germany

2. Early 2001: Initial website
with a forum & wiki…
…presenting a complete
collection of all available
distributed computing
projects with detailed
descriptions.

3. ...but what is distributed
computing?

4. Software – Clients

5. Software – Statistics &
Monitor Programs

6. Rechenkraft.net –
Party 2002 & 2003

7. ...in silico
Monsters

8. ...you could say: initially it was a
bit like being part of some sort of
ELECTRONIC SPORTS LEAGUE
competition which exists mainly
in order to enable underfunded
science projects. 

9. ...but then we realized that, for
various reasons, a lot of scientists
were not able to put their
computational project idea into
practice, even if they had the
funds – and that was the birth of
YOYO@HOME:

10. Yoyo@home…
…an umbrella project
allowing us to
incorporate anybody‘s
scientific applications in
BOINC. For free.

11. Presentations at Exhibitions & Conferences
• Geiger-Müller counter plus
„Uranglas“
• Quake Catcher Network
sensor
• diverse ARM development
boards
• beamer showing screen
savers from DC projects

12. Among many activities,
participating in an HIV-
combating project as
official partner of the
World AIDS day organizers
in 2013 once again got us
some local press
coverage…
…ultimately leading to the
offering of space in one of
our town‘s buildings:

13. [hsmr], the Hackspace
Marburg was born…
With space and tools at
hand… a lot of things
become possible…

14. A universal multi-
formfactor mainboard
cluster rack…
…accomodates ATX, µATX, Mini-ITX
Mainboards plus GPUs and also
embedded ARM systems such as the
NVIDIA Jetson Tegra K1 or
Hardkernel‘s ODROIDs.

15. Using our computer network
knowledge…
…within a
few days,
we were
able to
setup free
WLAN in
the local
refugee
camp.

16. Up-to-date ARM development hardware…
…is available in our
Hackspace and can be
accessed via SSH – just
contact us in case you
need access for client
develoment.
• NVIDIA Jetson Tegra K1 (ARM
Cortex-A15, NVIDIA Kepler GPU,
192 CUDA cores)
• ODROID-X2/U2/U3/XU/XU3/XU4

17. ...but wait a minute – if we can
turn other people’s scientific ideas
into BOINC projects, then why
don’t we setup a project entirely
of our own?
Well, that was the birth of
RNA WORLD:

18. RNA World…
…our first own project which
is a bioinformatic platform to
tackle open questions in RNA
biology.

19. ...wasn’t there some sort of glitch? 
Well, some of the tasks turned out to
run for a few months generating
results archives which, in compressed
form, yielded files of 50 GB in size.
Once unpacked (which was a trouble
on its own), we were lucky and got
small files – but then again in the
ten’s of thousands!
...so we learned one thing or two
about certain limitations of standard
operating systems. 

20. Still a number of groundbreaking
innovations were created as well...
...such as the first public job submission interfaces
available in distributed computing! 

21. Setup of a Laboratory…
…to experimentally verify results
generated by the RNA World project… but also to do other interesting things…

22. ...e.g. finding a cure for the
fireblight disease of some plants by
means of natural bacteriophages...
...and the development of a
universal bacteriophage construction
kit potentially applicable even for
human bacterial diseases in a
synthetic biology approach that
involves microfluidics-based genome
engineering!

23. In progress: Fireblight reporter – Online-Portal
• training module to
recognize the
symptoms
• photos & GPS data of
potential detection
sites are uploaded
• images of other
participants are judged
by community
members
• plant material
becomes available
• direct coupling of
information to
governmental agencies
possible

24. In progress: Arnika Mapper – Online-Portal
• training module to
recognize the plant
• photos & GPS data of
potential detection
sites are uploaded
• images of other
participants are judged
by community
members
• plant material for
cultivation becomes
available

25. ...if on top of all this, some
funding would be available... 

26. BMBF Citizen Science Strategy 2020…
…we helped to develop this
program over a period of more
than a year.
A few of our
suggestions
• funding should be
accessible to layman
• public Government-
funded maker spaces
in every larger city
• citizen  science
interface bureau in
every university

27. Thank you – Any questions, please?