Folding Forum

Hi guys,

This is a little "off beat," but folding has always been intriguing and special to me and I want to instill that interest into others so I am doing a motivational presentation to a group on this project.

My problem is that I need someone to interview and ask questions to (obviously will be by email or PM.) I have looked around for an email address or way to contact a "project representative" but I haven't found such a thing.

As a question, is there a person that I can talk to that is affiliated with this project in either administration or project representation so that I can get reputable answers and quotable statements from? (I did find the FAQ section, but I can't quote from it very professionally.)

I know that this is kinda off topic, so if I need to post this in the "Off Topic" thread, let me know and I will move it to there.

Thank you!
x

Dr. Pande and his team discovered long ago that off-loading support to a community-driven forum was the most efficient solution for them. It allowed them to focus on the science and simulations without becoming bogged down with support questions. Therefore it's not easy to find a central representative. You can pick someone from the forum here, or from someone on Freenode's #fah IRC channel, since the power users usually hang in both areas, myself included.

For what it's worth, I would be willing to help you out if you like, I would also recommend the admin Bruce or one of the forum mods. You mentioned the FAQs, a team of users from the forum here worked to put them together, including Bruce, 7im, and myself. I also wrote most of the F@h Wikipedia article, but everyone contributes in different ways so it depends on what credentials you're looking for. More opinions and different perspectives can help, although it depends on what you are trying to ask about of course.

If you need basic answers, the Folding@home Executive Summary PDF is a start. It's a little dated, but works for basic answers.

As noted above, the FAH Wiki article is a very good source of deeper information and answers, with much of the data well attributed.

Folding@home also has a YouTube channel, with several videos from the project founder, Dr. Pande. All of that would be "quotable." And his many Blog/News posts, searchable with Google box on the FAH web page.

Thank you, Jesse_V and 7im, for your replies. I have a list of ten questions. I know that many (if not all) of these questions are answered by the FaQ but I need to quote a person, not a page (life is hard is it not? haha.) I will look at speeches/questionnaires by Vijay Pande to see what answers he has as well.

So here are the questions, I want to thank you guys before hand for your time and thoughts! Have a great week.

1. How long has F@H been around?
2. How long have you been a part of F@H?
3. Would you say that F@H is an ethical and good approach?
4. Would you consider F@H to be a viable research method for solving (medical) problems?
a. Is it worth the time and computational investment?
b. What would you change about it?
5. Has F@H made any progress or breakthroughs in research?
6. How can F@H increase its quality of work and outcomes?
7. If, say, F@H did get the 1 million users they are shooting for, do you think that cancer/other protein cell related deceases could be solved?
8. Would you recommend a beginner level computer user to fold?
9. Are there any reasons why I should not give F@H as a motivational presentation?

When you look at the file properties of the Executive Summary PDF file, you can see that it was originally written in MS Word by Vijay Pande, created on 01/27/2011, converted to PDF using version 5 on a Mac running 10.6.6.

Everything in that file is a quote, in my opinion, and answers several of your questions.

1. Since October 1, 2000 (in the PDF)
2. Dr. Pande started Genome@home, a pre-cursor to Folding@home, so he was around even longer than most of us. Obviously, Dr. Pande has been there since the beginning, being the project founder. I started in July 2003.
3. Being that Dr. Pande is the project founder, #3 would be considered a rhetorical question. I say yes. I donate my time and effort as my abilities allow. I can stop any time I think the approach is no longer a good/ethical method.
4. IMO, yes. A. history will determine, B. Find better funding so they can upgrade the client to support new hardware quicker.
5. Yes. The PDF points at the Papers page. F@h has won awards for it's ability to accurately model proteins (which is admirable in itself), which then becomes the basis for the further research they are doing on the various diseases.
6. See 4.B. They need programming help.
7. I believe we can do that now with only 1/4 that number, which we have today, or else I wouldn't still be here. 4x the users just means we get there a lot faster. Dr. Pande has said as much, hence his statement leading to your question.
8. Dr. Pande pushed for the latest V7 client to be more beginner friendly. It was a primary design goal, which he stated here in forum and in the blog several times. I have and do recommend it. I even wrote the V7 Windows Install Guide to help beginners get up and running.
9. No reason not to use F@h. However, like any organization, it has faults and growth problems like any other. But whatever issues affect me, they do not compare to the overall worth of the project, and the lofty goals they expect to obtain. Like most people, my direct family has been touched by both Cancer and Alzheimer's. Sure, I could, and have donated to these causes in other ways. But this one suites me personally. If I had to give one reason not to use F@h, I would say that you need to consider the cost of donating, like any other donation you might make. What is the right amount for me? Running the Folding@home program is not free. It uses computing resources, so it uses electricity, which costs money. But you can choose to donate none, some, or a lot. So in the end, not really a good reason to not use F@h in a presentation.

IMO, you should get answers from several people, and use their best answers.

Thank you, 7im, for your response!

If anyone else would be willing to answer my questions, I would really appreciate it!

7im gave already some solid and good feedback, so I just put my individual 2¥ in:

2. How long have you been a part of F@H?
May 2013

3. Would you say that F@H is an ethical and good approach?
Yes, it ask for public support and put its results in public domain; so donors have the chance supporting academic research eventually help ourselves.

4. Would you consider F@H to be a viable research method for solving (medical) problems?
Given what I learned in the recent months about proteins and folding: it might not be the only "magic bullet" to solve all issues, but is a valid tool/method in our arsenal to fight cancer and other diseases.

a. Is it worth the time and computational investment?
Right now for me yes

b. What would you change about it?
Inability to spend the resources in energy and hardware.

5. Has F@H made any progress or breakthroughs in research?
See the published lists of publication and keep in mind: it's basic research, the way into a drug and to the patient is longer

6. How can F@H increase its quality of work and outcomes?
Focus on its core competencies and get active more help/support from donors willing to contribute more then CPU/GPU and kWh

7. If, say, F@H did get the 1 million users they are shooting for, do you think that cancer/other protein cell related deceases could be solved?
Again, folding is only one part, but an important one. More donors would allow faster throughput but I don't know how much bottleneck we have afterwards in analysis and therapeutical implementation.

8. Would you recommend a beginner level computer user to fold?
Sure, v7 in its standard setup makes it very easy to start on a decent computer plus the visualization it can offer is a nice eye catcher potentially increasing interesst.

9. Are there any reasons why I should not give F@H as a motivational presentation?
No, it is a good cause and combines a solid number of individuals and team to work together. It promote collaboration with all its challenges.

Start folding, keep folding.

xtreme-one wrote:1. How long has F@H been around?

It was founded on October 1, 2000, so that's 14 years, 20 days ago.

xtreme-one wrote:2. How long have you been a part of F@H?

I first heard about Folding@home and started running the software in late October of 2010, so just about four years now.

xtreme-one wrote:3. Would you say that F@H is an ethical and good approach?

I would say so, yes. Computer simulations must be supplemented and confirmed by laboratory experiments, but I have no objections to computers solving tough problems for us.

xtreme-one wrote:4. Would you consider F@H to be a viable research method for solving (medical) problems? a. Is it worth the time and computational investment? b. What would you change about it?

When Folding@home first started it was widely considered a very novel way of tackling medical research. Distributed computing had just started, computers and the Internet were still in their infancy, so Folding@home's early papers were really well received by the scientific community. Now a days, computer simulations are quite common, but Folding@home continues to be a very valuable research method primarily because of its thorough results and its sheer amount of processing capabilities.

Whether its worth the time and the computational effort is a decision each donor needs to make for themselves. I believe that it is. Folding@home is designed to not occupy too much of my attention; 99% of the time it runs in the background without my supervision or intervention. I pause it when I need my computer's resources but let it run when I don't. Clearly many people are in the same boat since Folding@home has such a large userbase.

If I could change one thing, it would be to add more developers and increase transparency between researchers and donors. Volunteer-run projects usually need a thriving community and a lot of communication behind them; while Folding@home has this on this forum, its very little compared to other communities like Tor or Linux, so I would like to see it grow.

xtreme-one wrote:5. Has F@H made any progress or breakthroughs in research?

Yes, of course, very significant ones too. Unfortunately it's sometimes difficult to connect with some of Folding@home's work because it typically tackles molecular problems that are fundamental to larger disease research. It's however necessary to understand molecular processes before you can design drugs to manipulate those processes, and Folding@home is focused on that underlying understanding. I've summarized most of F@h's progress on its Wikipedia article. With 114 scientific papers published as a direct result of its work across the last 14 years, it's easy to see that it's made a significant impact. There have also been several instances where Folding@home takes the disease research all the way to the drug design and proposal stage.

xtreme-one wrote:6. How can F@H increase its quality of work and outcomes?

Folding@home can do more work and achieve a higher degree of quality of that work with more processing power. The more power it has, the more projects it can tackle in parallel and the faster it can complete them. Furthermore, some molecular problems are very difficult to tackle because they require huge amounts of processing capabilities. If Folding@home obtains these capabilities, these problems can be probed. Time and time again, Folding@home has been at the head of the competition in this regard, tackling problems larger and more completely than even supercomputers.

xtreme-one wrote:7. If, say, F@H did get the 1 million users they are shooting for, do you think that cancer/other protein cell related deceases could be solved?

That's hard to answer because it's not that cut and dry. You can't throw a million computers at a problem and consider the problem solved. If Folding@home had a million users, it could tackle some extraordinarily tough problems; problems like long simulations of very large molecules or maybe even full simulations of relevant sections of an entire cell. Ultimately you need to have a low-level and thorough understanding of mysterious molecular processes before you can have a hope of manipulating those processes accurately and safely. If your computer simulations show large amounts of promise, then you can proceed with engineering and physically testing the drug. After that there's a huge to-do list before any drug enters the market and sees widespread use. So I would say that if Folding@home had a million users it would vastly increase their capabilities, accelerate our research in those areas, and likely see a solution much faster, but no guarantee of course.

xtreme-one wrote:8. Would you recommend a beginner level computer user to fold?

Yes. It's incredibly easy, requires no technical knowledge, and it runs without requiring any intervention. The latest software tailors to beginners, so all the controls are easy to work with. There's no reason not to fold.

xtreme-one wrote:9. Are there any reasons why I should not give F@H as a motivational presentation?

None that I can think of.

Thank you, ChristianVirtual and Jesse_V, for your excellent responses! Thank you for the time spent!