Disclaimer: I used AI to help organize this, but the words are mine.

Project summary

Project Ganymede gives free compute, server access, and mentorship to people who are locked out of university research resources. That includes high schoolers, college students without lab access, and independent researchers. Projects are reviewed before anything runs, and the work they produce is open-sourced. Ganymede is run by Patchwork Labs, a Vermont 501(c)(3).

What are this project's goals? How will you achieve them?

A lot of good research ideas die because the person with the idea can’t get a few hours of compute. A university student can ask their lab. A 16-year-old can’t. Ganymede closes that gap. People pitch a project, we review it, and approved projects get compute through Krater, our job portal, along with a mentor. Our first real request was from a high school student building a hospital readmission prediction model for a university presentation. The compute cost about $20. Small grants go a long way at this scale, and that’s the point.

How will you know it worked?

We’ll count three things: how many projects we fund, how many of them finish, and how many publish their work in the open. A finished project is one that ships code, a writeup, or a presentation. We’ll also track cost per project, since cheap grants that actually get used are the whole bet. On the safety side, success means every dual-use project goes through review before it gets compute, with no exceptions. We’ll post updates on this page as projects wrap up, so donors can see where the money went.

How will this funding be used?

Our long-term plan is to run Ganymede on hardware we own, since that gets far more compute per dollar over time than renting. The minimum of $1,000 keeps projects moving now. It pays for cloud compute for approved projects, and at the cost of our first project, that’s dozens of them. Reaching the $10,000 goal lets us start buying our own hardware, so each dollar after that goes further. Any funds not yet spent on hardware go to compute for approved projects.

Who is on your team? What's your track record on similar projects?

Jasper Mayone founded Patchwork Labs and runs Ganymede day to day. He’s a CS student at Wentworth Institute of Technology and works in IT there. He grew up in the Hack Club and MLH community, interned at MLH, and has worked on Hack Club’s infrastructure, so he’s seen up close how far small grants and real resources go for young builders. Adam Sidwa is Ganymede’s administrator. Kieran Klukas and Dominic Petrarca sit on the board. Patchwork got its 501(c)(3) determination in August 2025. We built Krater, Ganymede’s job portal, ourselves, and our pilot has already funded its first student project.

What are the most likely causes and outcomes if this project fails?

The most likely failure is that demand outruns our compute and good projects wait in line. The second is that a project slips through review that shouldn’t have, which is why dual-use review happens before any money moves. If Ganymede fails outright, the hardware and the open-source portal stay useful to the next group that tries this.

How much money have you raised in the last 12 months, and from where?

Our only outside funding so far is a $250 microgrant from Funding Findr, where we were the first recipient. Everything else has come out of pocket, which is part of why we’re here.