I would like to take this opportunity to introduce a computational research project I have been developing for over 2 years. Under special conditions algae can photosynthetically produce molecular hydrogen from splitting water molecules. The Department of Energy has committed resources to investigate renewable biological hydrogen. As a graduate student I looked at the potential for creating virtual experiements to that would help us find the optimal efficiency in producing hydrogen. By finding economical ways of producing hydrogen using green chemistry, automobiles may one day use hydrogen fuel cells which have zero carbon emissions. 

To make such a project computationally attainable, I would need large scale computer resources. Thanks to the work by UC Berkeley, volunteer computing is a way researchers and computer enthusiasts can combine resources over the internet and solve computational problems. Hydrogen@Home is using this open grid middle ware software called Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Networked Computing BOINC. We are in the process of building collaborative relationships with scientists using similar molecular simulations at a much smaller scale. Through these collaborations and resource sharing, we hope to accelerate the development towards a Hydrogen Economy.

Let me close by announcing two events I will be speaking at related to Hydrogen@Home and BOINC http://gcl.cis.udel.edu/EastCoast08/

I will also present Hydrogen@Home at the 4th annual Pan-Galactic BOINC conference in Grenoble, France  http://boinc.berkeley.edu/trac/wiki/WorkShop08