100K Cheeks and the Stanford Blood Center are set to host a blood and bone marrow drive today from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. at Stanford Hospital & Clinics.

Graduate School of Business professor Jennifer Aaker, who works with 100K Cheeks, is using social media to encourage South Asians to enroll in the National Bone Marrow Registry.

“Social media is not inherently meaningful,” Aaker said in an interview with the School of Medicine’s Scope blog. “Yet the power of social technology, when fully engaged, can be nothing short of revolutionary.”

Using social media to augment the number of registered is one such “revolutionary” application. Stanford students launched 100K Cheeks last November and aims to sign up 100,000 people on the registry within a year. The organization hopes that at least 80 percent of registered donors will be of South Asian descent.

–Joshua Falk