• Folders@melb aims to support Folding@home. Folding@home is a research project aimed at developing new medicines for a variety of diseases, using a 'computational science' paradigm that relies on math-heavy software running experiments on a worldwide distribution of donated computers.

    About: Folding@home

    Folding@home is a research project that aims to develop new medicines for a variety of diseases. Specifically, the research relies on loads of donors that each run software that makes use of the donor's own computing resources (primarily their GPUs). Using these resources the math-heavy, iterative-based, software is able to make predictions of protein shape ('folding') at the molecular level.

    Medicine research: injustice driven by pharmaceutical companies

    Medical research is often supported by a collaboration between scientists and pharmaceutical companies. As these private companies usually have as their primary motive to maximise profits, this leads to medical breakthrus that don't have the effect on society as they perhaps should. For instance, most vaccines go to relatively rich countries, while developing countries struggle to afford the financial 'cost' of these medicines.

    Research projects like Folding@home provide an alternative, where their research and associated methodology are more transparent, allowing more people to contribute without restricting access . This is in contrast to 'Big Pharma' that puts up walls around 'their' research using Intellectual Property laws, thus reducing access and arguably deceleration innovation. More assertively, our organisation is refuting the morally-devoid bullshit that these companies, and moreover the supposedly 'learned' folks with PhDs, are spruiking.

    About: Folders@melb

    Our non-profit association aims to support Folding@home. We're trying to increase visibility of F@H's research by primarily engaging high-school students, while also increasing computing resources needed for their research. Check out our Governing Rules for more about what our association is doing.

    Folders@melb: Molecular Dynamics introduction

    If you're interested in learning more about this whole computational-science research-paradigm thing-y, please check out our course - Computational Science: predicting Molecular Dynamics via Mechanistic Modelling. If you're interested in developing this initiative further please do contact us: 0451 653 170