Join Minnesota Geeks Helping Disease Research with Folding@Home

Are you, like me, the sort of geek who has multiple computers in their house? Do you have a gaming computer or server at home that’s not being used much most of the time? Maybe you have multiple video cards in your gaming or your editing rig, but you only usually use one at a time. Well, you can put those idling CPUs and GPUs to work to help with COVID-19 research, and it is very easy to set up.

Folding@home is a program for you to run simulations of protein dynamics for research labs on your personal computer. It’s like SETI@home only for disease research! And now you can join the Twin Cities Geeks Folding@home team so we can show the world that Minnesota is doing our part to assist researchers.

Simply head over to the Folding@home website and download the client. Click through a couple screens of basic set up, and your computer will be ready and available for research. Leave your category set to “any” and it will automatically prioritize COVID-19 research.

Twin Cities Geeks Team #238643

Don’t forget to join the Twin Cities Geeks Folding@home team. Just enter the Twin Cities Geeks team number, 238643, during setup or at any time in the configuration settings of your client. It’s normal for your client to be idle sometimes, since research is only in early stages. The website explains:

Please be patient if you experience idle time as we face the COVID-19 pandemic together! We are working like mad to start simulations of COVID-19 proteins. The enthusiastic response to our effort has been tremendous and has sometimes emptied our queues. This is a great “problem” to have as there is no end to the valuable science we can do, its just a matter of giving us some time to get more running.

But if you set up your system now, this research will be able to be completed more efficiently in the coming weeks!

Sewing masks while folding is peak #StayHomeMN.