You don't need to be a scientist to use this coin. All you have to do is check which projects are currently approved by the community to earn Gridcoin reward and join to a project you'd like to contribute, be it in the medicine field (World Community Grid, GPUGrid, Rosetta@Home, etc) to Number Crunching (Collatz Conjecture, PrimeGrid, Amicable Numbers, etc) to Space and Extraterrestrial Exploration (SETI@Home, Milyway@Home, Universe@Home, etc). As you can see, there's a variety of projects you can contribute and earn Gridcoin reward, and don't forget those coins earned earns 1.5% interest.