Here's How You Can Help With COVID-19 Research From Home

Now that almost every country across the globe has declared their own version of a lockdown, many people are left stuck at home feeling helpless as headlines about the global pandemic dominate the news and all social media feeds.

While it might seem like battling the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is now on the hands of the frontliners like doctors and scientists, there’s one thing you can do that can help them.

The scientific research project led by Stanford University’s computational biologists called Folding@home has called on people to help with its COVID-19 research. All you have to do is download the desktop app and let it run in the background.

Once the app is successfully installed, you don’t have to do anything! While performing your usual tasks on your computer, Folding@home will use your spare processing resources to contribute to computing time. If you want to maximise your contributions, however, you can choose to tweak your settings.

Volunteer computing works by using your unused storage and processing power to analyze small bits of data which is part of a massive scientific project. Folding@home’s current efforts in particular is focused on simulating COVID-19’s properties to hunt for possible therapeutic opportunities and cures.

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Running these simulations require enormous amounts of data, which is impossible to process with just a small team. That’s why, with the help of volunteers all over the world, you can create a virtual supercomputer which will aid in producing more simulations. ‘Each simulation you run is like buying a lottery ticket’, says Folding@home, “the more tickets we buy, the more chances of hitting the jackpot”’.

Producer of gaming chips NVIDIA, and PC Master Race, a community of PC gamers, have encouraged their followers to join the race to beat COVID-19.