The source code for a set of software tools developed by Microsoft Research to advance AIDS vaccine research and development is available for download starting today from Microsoft’s CodePlex Web site. By sharing the code openly and at no charge with the worldwide AIDS research community, Microsoft hopes to spur other scientists and researchers to take up the tools and even build on them, thereby speeding the way toward a vaccine.

The code for four software tools is available now at no charge via CodePlex, an online portal created in 2006 to foster collaborative software development projects and host shared source code as part of Microsoft’s Shared Source Initiative. The tools and source code are an initial piece of Microsoft’s technical computing effort – a company-wide initiative to collaborate with the worldwide scientific community by reducing the time to new scientific insights and breakthroughs by furthering the state of information technology in scientific research.

The software tools are designed to help AIDS researchers around the globe harness the power of computing to more quickly identify the crucial elements of an effective cellular vaccine.

“We apply technology to some of the world’s toughest technical and societal challenges,” says David Heckerman, who devotes himself to vaccine work as the lead researcher of the Machine Learning and Applied Statistics Group at Microsoft Research. “And with 10,000 people per day dying of AIDS, this world health crisis is certainly one of those challenges.”