Boinc

This projects is concerned with folding proteins. A protein is a long thin string-like entity, with various small offshoots. Each protein folds in on itself. Exactly how it folds depends on the individual protein, but, crucially, it folds in exactly the same way every time. This in turn determines the properties of each protein, and how it interacts with other proteins and entities.

Determining how a particular protein folds experimentally is time-consuming and expensive. To aid this process, Rosetta@Home concerns itself with using computer models to predict how a protein will fold. This is still a time-consuming task for a computer to perform, but is much cheaper than experimental methods, especially since they're not actually paying for that computer time.

Rosetta@Home aim to design new proteins that will aid in the fight against diseases such as HIV, Malaria, Cancer, and Alzheimer's. See their Disease Related Research page for more information.

This project analyses data from a large space telescope, looking primarily for spinning neutron stars/pulsars. They have just under 9000 hours of data from the LIGO telescope in Washington, and it takes a large amount of processing power to analyse all of that data, trying to find evidence of what they are looking for.

This project contributes to our understanding of space objects, and while I'm not sure what the benefit is to me personally, it appeals to my inner-geek. The project has discovered six spinning neutron stars so far, of which I personally have discovered none, but I might do one day.