April 6, 2020 — Since the pool rooms of computer science at the University of Paderborn cannot currently be used, the institute for computer science has decided to use the computers there to participate in the “Folding @ home” project for Standford University. The unused computing power of the new, fast computer systems is made available for simulations of protein structures. These are important to better understand the mode of action of the coronavirus and thus to be able to develop a vaccine.
In the simulations, a complex task is distributed over several computers and their performance is used to accomplish the task. Due to the distributed computing, unused processing resources of personal computers on which the simulation software is installed can be used. Institutions participating in “Folding @ home” receive parts of a simulation, calculate them and send them back to the database server of the project. An overall simulation is then created there.
Anyone interested in participating in the project can join the IT team at any time. The team’s name is Paderborn University Department of Computer Science, Team ID: 252827.
To view the team statistics: https://stats.foldingathome.org/team/252827
Further information and the required software can be found on the official website of the project: https://foldingathome.org/
Source: Juuli Eckstein, University of Paderborn