Be a "Sleeping Hero" with Vodafone's DreamLab

Help researchers find the cure for the coronavirus by running an app on your smartphone when you're not using it.

23:25 11 April 2020

If you belong to the 79per cent of the population who own a smartphone, you can help end the coronavirus crisis by simply downloading an app on your smartphone and letting it run while you're sleeping. 

 

DreamLab, an app from the Vodafone Foundation and Imperial College London, crowdsources processing power from devices to create a virtual supercomputer that conducts the research. It has shifted from finding the cure to cancer and now focusing on Covid-19 research for its new Corona-AI project. 

 

The virtual supercomputer can process millions of calculations that would take years if done manually. However, using collective smartphone power, the process will take just three months. 

 

Helen Lamprell, trustee and board member of the Vodafone UK Foundation and general counsel and external affairs director at Vodafone UK, said: "We ask everyone to come together and harness the collective power of their smartphone by connecting to DreamLab. If everyone in the UK connects, we have the potential to really make a difference in the fight against Covid-19." 

 

Dr Kirill Veselkov, who is leading the research, added: "We have to do difficult and complicated analyses using AI and all of this takes a huge amount of computer power. DreamLab creates a supercomputer that enables us to do this important work in a relatively short time frame."