The Lattice Project: Difference between revisions

'''The Lattice Project''' was a discontinued grid computing and [[wikipedia:volunteer computing|volunteer computing]] system operated by the Laboratory of Molecular Evolution at the [[wikipedia:University of Maryland, College Park|University of Maryland]], College Park.<ref name="wikipedia">{{Cite web |title=The Lattice Project |url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lattice_Project |work=Wikipedia |access-date=2026-07-14}}</ref> Rather than being a single program, Lattice combined several distinct computing resources, including dedicated [[wikipedia:HTCondor|Condor]] pools, [[wikipedia:Portable Batch System|PBS]] compute clusters, and a public [[wikipedia:BOINC|BOINC]] volunteer pool, into one production Grid system built on the [[wikipedia:Globus Toolkit|Globus Toolkit]].<ref name="bazinet2009thesis">{{Cite thesis |last=Bazinet |first=Adam L. |title=The Lattice Project: A Multi-model Grid Computing System |type=Master's thesis |publisher=University of Maryland, College Park |year=2009 |url=https://drum.lib.umd.edu/bitstreams/82bde2fc-1831-47c1-95ad-00ca88268e46/download |access-date=2026-07-14}}</ref> Its best-known use was distributing maximum-likelihood [[wikipedia:phylogenetics|phylogenetic]] analyses through the Genetic Algorithm for Rapid Likelihood Inference (GARLI) program, letting researchers worldwide reconstruct evolutionary relationships from DNA and protein sequence data.<ref name="wikipedia" />  

The flagship application run on the Lattice Grid was GARLI, the Genetic Algorithm for Rapid Likelihood Inference, an open-source phylogenetic inference program written and maintained by Derrick J. Zwickl that searches for the evolutionary tree, branch lengths, and substitution model parameters maximizing the likelihood of a sequence dataset.<ref name="sysbio2014" /><ref name="garliwiki">{{Cite web |title=Home |url=https://github.com/zwickl/garli/wiki |work=GARLI wiki, GitHub |access-date=2026-07-14}}</ref> GARLI's underlying approach was first developed in Zwickl's 2006 doctoral dissertation at the University of Texas at Austin.<ref name="zwickl2006">{{Cite thesis |last=Zwickl |first=Derrick J. |title=Genetic algorithm approaches for the phylogenetic analysis of large biological sequence datasets under the maximum likelihood criterion |type=PhD dissertation |publisher=The University of Texas at Austin |year=2006}}</ref> In general terms, a maximum-likelihood phylogenetic search of this kind seeks the tree topology <math>T</math>, branch lengths <math>\mathbf{v}</math>, and model parameters <math>\boldsymbol{\theta}</math> that maximize

== Discontinuation ==

The Lattice Project is not currently listed among active BOINC projects, and both of its web addresses, ''lattice.umiacs.umd.edu'' and ''boinc.umiacs.umd.edu'', are offline as of this writing. Because BOINC client software depends on a project's own website to retrieve account, application, and scheduling information, the loss of the Lattice BOINC website meant volunteer computers could no longer attach to or receive work from the project, effectively ending that instance regardless of whether any Grid infrastructure remained active elsewhere.<ref name="wikipedia" />