Articles
Folding@home Success Story
Since the humble days back in June of 2005 when Jeffery Festa suggested that life extension advocates pool their collective computing muscle and fold for The Longevity Meme team (TLM, #32641), few other folding teams have shown such persistent improvement and high level of participtation. Four years ago TLM was at rank 617 in the world, had 55 members, and was averaging 2,500 points per day (PPD). At its height in early 2009 TLM had nearly 100 contributors per day (over 400 total members), cranked out a bit over 300,000 PPD, and rose to rank 70! The team routinely had 25% of members folding on any particular day, much higher than the 10% or less of most teams. To this day TLM continues forging ahead.
The team was helped along, in part, by the establishment of the F@H Prize in early 2008. Visionaries such as Reason , The Immortality Institute , Life Extension Foundation , and Maciek Kolodziejczyk helped establish and fund the Prize. Special recognition must go out to Imminst member DNAmechanic for detailed record-keeping throughout the years and to all the Imminst volunteers who helped folders get started and set them folding to the maximum extent possible. Folding@home is a long-term project of basic science (protein folding) that requires contributions small and large from millions of volunteers. The eventual pay-off will be a greater understanding of human biology and the processes that lead to human diseases and attendant suffering. Everyone who folds should be proud of their individual and team efforts. Keep folding for the future!
See here to learn more about folding and the TLM team.
See here to join the F@H Prize competition
Justin Loew
Executive Director
Immortality Institute