Projects

Folding@home

The Folding@home team released its software to the public in September 2000. The aim of the project is to simulate protein dynamics, including the process of protein folding and the movements of proteins implicated in a variety of diseases such as Cancer, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Huntington’s, Influenza, and many others. In order to carry out these simulations you need enormous computing power, which is extremely expensive. Folding@home brings together citizen scientists who volunteer to run simulations on their personal computers.

FAIRsFAIR

Research data should “flow” unhindered and loss-free along the life cycle of research projects. “FAIR Data Principles” formulate principles that must be fulfilled when dealing with sustainably reusable research data:

According to the FAIR principles guiding the Open Data sharing in H2020 projects since 2016, data should be “Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Re-usable”.

The question therefore arises: How “FAIR” is research data in Europe today?

FOSTER

The FOSTER and FOSTER+ projects focused on promoting the practical implementation of Open Science, with activities targeting academic staff, young scientists and policy-makers in particular. Partners from disciplines in the life sciences, social sciences and humanities tailored training content to the practices of each domain. Outcome-oriented workshops were organized, providing participants with tangible skills, such as selecting relevant repositories, understanding how to license research data, and negotiating EU data protection laws.

World Community Grid

World Community Grid enables anyone with a computer, smartphone or tablet to donate their unused computing power to advance cutting-edge scientific research on topics related to health, poverty, and sustainability. It brings together volunteers and researchers at the intersection of computational chemistry, open science and citizen science.  

Open Schools for Open Societies – OSOS

Open science, open source, open access…these concepts are now familiar to you. What about Open schools? 

According to the OSOS project (Open Schools for Open Societies), this term stands for schools that become open communities of learning by opening up to their community while using the school’s environment to enrich the learning experience of the students. It gives students the opportunity to learn together with the real world and other people than only their teachers.

Johns Hopkins

Johns Hopkins experts in global public health, infectious disease, and emergency preparedness have been at the forefront of the international response to COVID-19. 

They created a website as a resource to help advance the understanding of the virus, inform the public, and brief policymakers in order to guide a response, improve care, and save lives. 

Nextstrain

Nextstrain is an open-source project to harness the scientific and public health potential of pathogen genome data. They provide a continually updated view of publicly available data alongside powerful analytic and visualization tools which can be used by the public. Through interactive data visualizations, they aim to allow exploration of always up-to-date datasets, providing a novel surveillance tool to the scientific and public health communities.

Rosetta@home

You don’t have to be a scientist to do science.  

This is the slogan of the Rosetta@home project. The idea is quite simple – you can donate free computing capacity in times where you don’t need it to determine the 3-dimensional shapes of proteins. By running the Rosetta program on your computer, you will help researchers speed up processes and increase knowledge to fight against major human diseases such as such as HIV, Malaria, Cancer, and Alzheimer’s. Currently, Rosetta@home is mainly used to model important coronavirus proteins. 

Ring-a-Scientist

ing-a-Scientist wants to bring researchers into the classroom – live via a videoconferencing call. Depending on the school subject and the teacher’s preferences, a call can include virtual laboratory tours, debates, current research and career advice.  

How can it help me? 

Teachers or students who wish to enhance their lessons can use the platform ring-a-scientist to get in contact with researchers from various disciplines. Researchers from the appropriate discipline are available and can be brought directly into your classroom via video stream. 

NewHoRRIzon

NewHoRRIzon is a project that aims at further integrating Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) in the research and innovation systems on national and international levels. The concept of RRI is an approach which intends to bridge gaps between science, research and innovation communities and society at large by fostering more inclusive, anticipatory, open and responsive research and innovation systems.