DreamLab

[Gilthanis]

Dreamlab with the Garvin Institute.

The DreamLab app uses the power of your Smartphone to fast track cancer research.
Cancer affects so many of the people we love. But what if you could help by speeding up cancer research, simply by going to bed. Researchers are hindered by limited access to supercomputers. So that’s where you and the DreamLab app come in. It’s a free to purchase app* that uses the processing power of your idle phone to solve a piece of the cancer research puzzle. If just 1,000 people used the app, cancer puzzles would be solved 30 times faster.

For Vodafone Australia customers, the data to use DreamLab is free on our network (but if you’re also contributing over WiFi, you’ll be charged as per your WiFi plan),. Roaming incurs international rates.

If you’re not with Vodafone Australia, you’ll use data from your mobile or WiFi plan, but don’t worry it’s small and you can choose your monthly limit.

Download the DreamLab app from Google Play. Then simply charge your phone and wake up knowing you’ve helped find new ways to treat cancer.

Some notes as of 10/5/16

You can choose between Breast , Ovarian, Pancreatic, Prostate, or all of these forms of cancer to contribute towards.
The project does not yet have a leader board to compare your progress to.
The project does not yet have teams or a user handle to register.
If you set your data to unlimited on WiFi, it supposedly will utilize multi-threading.
This currently will only run while charging.
The app will pause processing if you lose data (wifi and/or mobile)
Their FAQ says that it won't heat up your phone because it uses very little of power from your phone. However, I have noticed it does increase heat which should be a no brainer. It however did produce less heat than BOINC typically does if that matters to some.

 

[Gilthanis]

Just a few items from their page I figured may be helpful.


How will DreamLab help people affected by cancer?

Currently cancer is thought of by its tissue of origin – lung, breast or pancreatic cancer. But cancer is a disease of the DNA, and so with the advances in genome sequencing, world-leading researchers at Garvan are interested in grouping cancers based on genetic mutations. It’s hoped in the future that this study will give doctors the information they need to personalise a patient’s cancer treatment. Because, due to their genetic profile, a person with pancreatic cancer may in fact respond better to a drug traditionally used to treat breast cancer – and if you have an aggressive cancer, then getting the right treatment first time is vital). The researchers at Garvan told us that one thing slowing their research progress is the limited access they have to supercomputers to crunch this complex data. That’s where Vodafone’s DreamLab comes in. DreamLab enables everyone to donate the processing power of their idle Smartphones to speed up cancer research. Each phone downloads part of a research problem, processes it and sends the result back to the team at Garvan. It’s hoped that in future, the information generated by DreamLab will enable doctors to personalise a patient’s cancer treatment, based on their genetic profile.

How does DreamLab work faster than Garvan’s computers?

Based on our tests, 33 new android devices will analyse the same amount data about as fast as a CPU core of the Garvan’s supercomputer. Garvan’s supercomputer consists of 1,280 CPU cores in total.

What is the goal of DreamLab?

Initially, DreamLab will finish analyzing the genetic mutations for breast, pancreatic, ovarian and prostate cancer within 12 months. Following this, we will extend the app to support additional cancer types, genomics analysis or other complex diseases.