About MilkyWay@Home
Milkyway@Home uses the BOINC platform to harness volunteered computing resources, creating a highly accurate three dimensional model of the Milky Way galaxy using data gathered by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. This project enables research in both astroinformatics and computer science.
In computer science, the project is investigating different optimization methods which are resilient to the fault-prone, heterogeneous and asynchronous nature of Internet computing; such as evolutionary and genetic algorithms, as well as asynchronous newton methods. While in astroinformatics, Milkyway@Home is generating highly accurate three dimensional models of the Sagittarius stream, which provides knowledge about how the Milky Way galaxy was formed and how tidal tails are created when galaxies merge.
Milkyway@Home is a joint effort between Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's departments of Computer Science and Physics, Applied Physics and Astronomy. Feel free to contact us via our forums, or email astro[at]cs.lists.rpi[dot]edu.
Read more on our Science Page!
Join MilkyWay@Home
- Read our rules and policies
- This project uses BOINC. If you're already running BOINC, select Attach to Project. If not, download BOINC.
- When prompted, enter
http://milkyway.cs.rpi.edu/milkyway/ - If you're running a command-line or pre-5.0 version of BOINC, create an account first.
- If you have any problems, get help here.
Community
- Donate to MilkyWay@Home via the Dudley Observatory
- Message boards
- Server Status
- Profiles
- User search
- Statistics
- Languages
Science
Returning participants
- Your account - view stats, modify preferences
- Teams - create or join a team
- Certificate
- Applications
People
Milkyway@Home is currently run by:- Travis Desell, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, University of North Dakota
- Heidi Newberg, Associate Professor of Physics, Applied Physics, and Astronomy
- Malik Magdon-Ismail, Associate Professor of Computer Science
- Carlos Varela, Associate Professor of Computer Science
- Boleslaw Szymanski, Claire and Roland Schmitt Distinguished Professor of Computer Science
- Matthew Newby, Graduate Research Assistant in Physics, Applied Physics, and Astronomy
- Jeffery Thompson, Graduate Research Assistant in Physics, Apllied Physics, and Astronomy
- Matt Arsenault, Graduate Research Assistant in Physics
- Jake Bauer, Undergraduate Research Assistant in Physics, Applied Physics, and Astronomy
- Benjamin Willet, Postdoctoral Researcher in Physics, Applied Physics and Astronomy
- Nathan Cole, Graduate Research Assistant in Physics, Applied Physics and Astronomy
- Steve Ulins, Undergraduate Research Assistant in Physics
- Colin Rice, Undergraduate Research Assistant in Physics
- Shane Reilly, Undergraduate Research Assistant in Computer Science
- Joe Doran, Undergraduate Research Assistant in Computer Science
- Brian Chitester, Undergraduate Research Assistant in Computer Science
- Dave Przybylo, Undergraduate Research Assistant in Computer Science
- John Vickers, Undergraduate Research Assistant in Physics, Applied Physics and Astronomy
- Anthony Waters, Graduate Research Assistant in Computer Science


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