AUSTIN, Texas—Nov. 19, 2007: KUT Radio, Austin’s listener supported public radio station, is participating in the World Community Grid as a team and is encouraging its listeners to participate by lending their excess personal computing capacity to assist with scientific research.

The KUT team will run the software on its staff PCs and will educate its more than 200,000 weekly listeners on the project through a series of on-air spots, the KUT Web site, KUT.org, and KUT’s monthly e-newsletter. KUT will be promoting and supporting the World Community Grid throughout 2008.

IBM funds the project as a philanthropic program and has donated the hardware, software, technical services and expertise to build and maintain the infrastructure.

The World Community Grid, a massive virtual computer composed of more than 800,000 PCs and counting, represents one of the largest humanitarian research projects. IBM utilizes extensive IT security technology to ensure that the project is safe and secure.

KUT is supporting the “Discovering Dengue Drugs – Together” project. The goal of the project is to identify promising drug leads to combat the related dengue, hepatitis C, West Nile, and Yellow fever viruses. The extensive computing power of World Community Grid will be used to complete the structure-based drug discovery calculations required to identify these leads. The University of Texas Medical Branch is spearheading this research.

“KUT listeners generally have a broad global view even as they act locally to affect change, said Stewart Vanderwilt, director and general manager of KUT Radio. “The World Community Grid is an opportunity for KUT and our listeners to put into action our sense of civic duty on a project of global implication with significant local ties.”

IBM Manager of Corporate Citizenship and Corporate Affairs. “Simply by donating our unused computer cycle time, we can all have a profound effect on how quickly this team can move to the next phase of drug discovery.”

Since its inception in 2004, the World Community Grid has helped researchers complete several studies, including a comparison of genomes and the development of tools for early cancer diagnostics. The World Community Grid has projects through partnerships with non-profit, governmental and academic institutions, including a search for drugs to cure AIDS and a study of African climate change. The discoveries aided by the World Community Grid are made available to the public to help the global research community.

With the number of PCs in the world approaching the one billion mark, the World Community Grid has untold potential, leading many researchers to believe the next big breakthrough might be achieved with the help of home and work computers.

To join the KUT World Community Grid team and donate your computer to research, register on World Community Grid. Click on “Find a Team” and enter “KUT.” You will be asked to install a free, secure, small software program onto your computer.

About KUT Austin

For nearly 50 years, KUT Radio, 90.5, Austin’s listener-supported public radio, has strived to be the most trusted radio source for news and music in Central Texas. Nationally known for playing music that matters to Austin, KUT produces award-winning news programming, special features series and documentaries that are regularly broadcast nationwide – in addition to providing news from National Public Radio and Public Radio International. For more information, go to KUT.org.

Contacts:
Erin Geisler
(512) 475-8071
Email

Sandy Dochen
(512) 823-7500
Email

— KUT Staff