From brain drain to brain gain

Grid computing is so powerful it promises to help unlock the mysteries of the universe. But a more immediate benefit could be to allow promising young scientists in Africa to live at home rather than moving abroad.

HP and UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) have found that grid technology is a potentially effective tool in the campaign to counteract the ‘flight of human capital.’ By capitalizing on the skills of nationals living abroad, their project hopes to result in a virtual ‘brain gain’ for the African continent.

The aim is to create a network between researchers who have stayed in their native countries and those who have left, connecting scientists to international colleagues, research networks and funding opportunities. Faculty members and students at beneficiary universities will also be able to work on major collaborative research projects with other institutions around the world.

“Before, if we funded researchers to work in laboratories abroad, we could not be sure if they would come back,” said Dr. Maiouf Behamel, director of one of the participating universities, in Algeria. “We hope that this project will set an example that others can follow.”

African countries are struggling to slow an exodus of scientists, academics and other professionals – many of them with irreplaceable skills and experience. Replacing the 300,000 highly qualified Africans who have emigrated costs African countries an estimated $4 billion annually.¹

In an effort to combat these negative trends, HP and UNESCO will employ grid computing to link universities in Algeria, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal and Zimbabwe to international networks, putting their students in touch with the valuable experience of researchers who have emigrated. This is the second initiative of its kind following a successful pilot in South-East Europe.²

As the world's largest IT company and the leading technology solutions provider in Africa, HP is uniquely positioned to help.

HP will provide equipment – including servers and grid-enabling technologies – and local human resources to the universities, as well as training. Beyond the provision of technology and training, HP will fund research visits abroad and meetings between the five universities.
UNESCO will be in charge of overall coordination and monitoring of activities, as well as administrative management, evaluation and promotion of results. After its first two-year implementation phase, the project may well be extended to cover other countries.

HP and UNESCO chose five universities for their ability to connect with their diasporas in order to carry out advanced scientific research. “We selected the universities from a wide range of impressive proposals in disciplines ranging from biotechnology to renewable energy,” said Jeannette Weisschuh, head of Corporate Affairs for HP in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). “The project will make it possible for ambitious researchers who stay in Africa to benefit from the experience of those who have left.”

Based on the same idea as the World Wide Web, the grid goes much, much further. It shares not only information but also computing power and storage. Scientists can log on to a grid via their PC and have calculations performed by machines all across the planet.

HP's commitment to grid computing ranges from scientific applications to enterprise deployments. HP develops products that can be used in grids for scientific research and business. HP was the first commercial member of the operational grid for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) – the world's largest scientific instrument – at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics. The grid powers research into the fundamental nature of matter.

“Grid computing is a very effective way to maximise IT resources and enable universities and research institutions to make massive distributed computations,” said Arnaud Pierson, Programme Manager for HP University Relations in HP EMEA. “Ultimately, the grid is designed to render almost anything in IT – computers, processing power, data, Web services, storage space, software or data – as a ‘grid service’.”

The promise of grid computing makes it one of the most talked-about ideas in enterprise IT and researchers at HP are working to bring the benefits of grid computing to the corporate world.