Folding@Home

Folding@Home is a distributed computing project from Pande Group at Stanford University. Dr. Pande and his group study the folding and misfolding of proteins and their effects on the human body. In other terms, Pande Group studies how cancer, Alzheimer's, Huntington's, Parkinson's, ALS and other diseases form.

In order to obtain enough data to analyze, Pande Group relies on their Folding@Home software. F@H is a program that runs on just about any operating system, and any computer processor thus making it available to anyone that wishes to participate in the research process. Participation is simple, you just install the F@H program and you're good to go.

The F@H client that you install, then uses your computers processing power to compute algorithms that simulates a proteins folding pattern. The simulation looks for anomalies in the folding, or misfolds, and records how and when in the folding pattern this misfold occurred.

F@H does not just look for misfolds, it also simulates how proteins react to drugs which they are introduced to. Effectively testing drugs that my be used to cure the aforementioned diseases.

Pande Group has had success with the Folding@Home project, and will continue to see results as the program expands.

Many computer hardware manufacturers have jumped aboard the F@H project and sponsor teams. One company, in specific, that has done a tremendous amount of work for the F@H project is EVGA, a graphics card and motherboard manufacturer. Over the past two years, Folding@EVGA has grown to a massive team of nearly 6,000 members and is currently the top 5th, soon to be 3rd, producing team in the whole project.

I take pride in being a part of the Folding@EVGA team, in fact, I am wearing our team shirt as I write this. For the past year, I have donated my computer to the F@H project and I will continue to do so. Many people argue that F@H is a waste of time and resources, and would rather just donate money. Money is great but the time it takes to put that money to good use is wasted; by running the F@H program, I know exactly where my donation goes, and exactly how it will be used. I do not have to worry about my money being wasted on something trivial or if it will even help the research.

So instead of making a one time monetary donation, that may or may not be put to use, or updating my status on Facebook to spread awareness, I donate daily. I donate in a way which I know will help. My donation will make a difference. Will yours?

Fellow team member "~The_Dude~" compiled some hardware statistics for anyone interested.