Questions for Folding@Home's Dr. Bowman Livestream 8/7pm central Thursday 16th April

ryau

We'll be on Facebook Live and posted to our YouTube channel shortly after.

Hi folks

This Thursday at 8pm eastern / 7pm central, I am going to be interviewing Dr. Gregory Bowman, the director of the Folding@Home project and streaming it on Facebook Live. It will be recorded and posted to our YouTube channel later.

We will be picking up some questions from the live comments, but if you can't make the live stream please comment below with your questions. I can't promise I'll be able to ask every one, but I'll try to incorporate as many as I can.

Tramp78

How do they decide which projects to take on? Is there a vetting process to only work with people with a track record or do they take on any project submited?

Tramp78

Before the Coronavirus came along, what other diseases were being studied in the "Other diseases" option? Are you thinking of expanding the conditions you investigate (do you have any control over that). 

Rodolfo23_

Developing a new prescription medicine that gains marketing approval is estimated to cost drugmakers $2.6 billion.[1] However, none of the world's top four vaccine companies has shown any significant interest towards developing a vaccine.[2] So far, there are over 60 development projects going on, each one of which receiving some millions of dollars of investments. For example, the European Union invested recently 37,5 million euros for developing a vaccine, which can be considered significant in comparison to many small-sized biomed firms participating the race.[3] Moreover, according to The Guardian, all but two development projects in their list of 41 had an experimental, computer simulation based approach — one which Folding@Home undoubtedly presents.[4] As stated by National Geographic, the technology for this kind of modern approach has been available for 30 years already, but during this time, it has never been able to produce one single functioning vaccine to the market.[5]


Although a firm believer in the cause of Folding@Home (I'm folding proteins at home all day and night with my three laptops), I cannot help thinking of the possibility that with such scarce resources, the vaccine development is a long-shot at its best. I mean, F@h is doing very prestigious work with its goal to help understanding how the proteins work, but alone, is this enough considering the fact that most of the development projects are run by small players with insufficient resources, while the "big pharma" remains more Sleeping than Beauty?

rbpeake

How are for-profit companies able to use the results you produce?  Would it be through some sort of licensing agreement?

fishbowl

Does Folding@Home mine cryptocurrency? If so please explain how we would know whether or not we were contributing resources to someone's mining effort.

Lilu

1.       My system CPU & GPU  contributing to project 13851 as per folding@home home page.How to know what is the project about? How to get the project code?

2.       If I want to contribute any project in terms of coding or being part of any, team which now doing some coding or testing is it possible? I have an experience of 8+ years in software industry.

3.       I have a keen interest in bioinformatics. Is there any document which explains the algorithm used in folding@home projects for protein analysis? can I be part of any bioinformatics team?     

JADO

How does the folding at home team define the projects that needs to be done?  Do they require review by a team or supervisor to prioritize it?  Once work is approved for processing how are resources allocated?  Why do some projects require CPU processing versus GPU processing?  Thanks

Brawlrus

I am having problems installing folding at home. When I open the installer it just crashes right away. My specs are ryzen 5 2600 and rx 5700 xt 8gb model.

ryau

Thanks for all the questions, I was able to incorporate some of them into the Q&A session, which you can view on Facebook or YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRHjtFXotxM