[CHALLENGE ENDED] Community Challenge: Folding@home

AmyReyes
Community Manager

FOLDING@HOME BANNER.png

 

UPDATE: we crunched the numbers and have our winners! Based on the scores earned between November 10th at 11am EST and December 9th at 11am EST, the top three winners rank as follows:

 

🥇1st Place: @NBP (aka 0xdecafbad) with 312,615,352 credits earned

🥈2nd Place: @NavyXC (aka navyxc) with 243,800,355 credits earned

🥉3rd Place: @RyGuy (aka Ryan_Ludwig) with 188,200,611 credits earned

 

In addition, we randomly selected three winners from the entrants to receive a pair of Meraki Community socks: @riles0nic@Hiciano, and @Shadius

 

Congratulations to all of our winners and a huge thanks to everyone who participated in helping to find a cure for Alzheimer's disease! Our closing rank as a team was 254 out of 255,607 and an impressive 46 for the month of December!

 

UPDATE: this challenge has ended! Stand by for the announcement of the prize winners 🏅

 

We’re thrilled to bring back the Community Folding@home Challenge! You wowed us the last time we ran this challenge by pulling together to help the Cisco Meraki team rank at around 200 out of 255K teams worldwide, donating all of this processing power to help find a cure for Alzheimer’s disease. Let’s see if we can do even better! 

 

ICYMI: Folding@home takes your unused computer power and puts it to a good cause - helping researchers find potential cures for diseases! Here’s how it works: The software allows you to donate CPU/GPU cycles from your own computers/servers to run portions of these simulations for researchers and speed up results. This crowdsourced processing power cuts simulation time down from days or weeks to just a couple hours, allowing researchers to move quickly in finding a cure!

 

November is Alzheimer’s awareness month here in the US, so we thought we’d once again focus our team’s processing power on this important research. Every 3 seconds someone develops dementia, and Alzheimer’s is the leading cause worldwide, accounting for 50-75% of all cases according to the Alzheimer’s Disease International Association. Fortunately, advancements are being made all the time, and we can help!

 

Over the next 30 days, the three community members who achieve the highest ranks among fellow members by donating their processing power towards Cisco Meraki team 243108 will be awarded fabulous Meraki prizes. 

 

Check out our first, second, and third place prizes:

 

First Place - Men or Women's PoloFirst Place - Men or Women's Polo

 

 Second Place - Cocktail KitSecond Place - Cocktail Kit

 

 Third Place - Hydroflask TumblerThird Place - Hydroflask Tumbler

 

In addition, everyone who joins the Cisco Meraki team and earns at least 200 "Credits" towards fighting Alzheimer's disease will be entered into a random drawing for one of three stylish pairs of Meraki Cloud socks:

 

Cisco Meraki cloud socks.jpeg

 

 

How to enter

 

If you have access to gaming computers, servers and/or even just a home PC, get started by following THIS link. Once you’ve set up your account and selected "Alzheimer's" as your cause, share your username in a comment on this blog post before 11 a.m. EST on Friday, December 9th. Only points credited to Cisco Meraki team 243108 will be counted. To join the team, simply enter “243108” into the client setup when you install the client. 

 

On December 9th, we will announce the top three ranking community members, as determined by Folding@Home’s scoring. We'll also announce the 3 randomly selected winners from the rest of the Folding@home Cisco Meraki team. That means, even if you aren't able to contribute at a high enough level to compete for the top ranks, you'll still have a chance to win sweet swag! 

 

You must post your username here to be eligible. Note that your comment on this blog post containing your username will be public and visible throughout the contest. If you already have credits to your username on the Cisco Meraki team, we will only be counting the credits you earn between now and December 9th.

 

The fine print:

 

For more information regarding Folding@home, please see the useful links below:

 

Folding@Home FAQ

Creating a User and Joining Team 243108

More about "folding"

29 Comments
Hiciano
Here to help

Great initiative, guys! Can't wait to participate!

My username is "Hiciano"

janguiano
Conversationalist

Ravenhorus

Shadius
Building a reputation

Username: Shadius

NavyXC
Conversationalist

navyxc

rvdkieboom
Comes here often

Great initiative Meraki community!

My username from 2 devices: Static34

Those Meraki Cloud socks are looking good 🙂 

kevin_latiff
Just browsing

matrix452

ianwolfgang
Comes here often

pathsofglory

JMSEODM
New here

Helping from Mexico city, we are not eligible for any prize but in this initiative all of us are winners.

 

Folding's Username: JSanchezODM

 

😀

Inderdeep
Kind of a big deal

my username: inder12

BlueLakeNetwork
Conversationalist

Excited to get going!  User is JSBlueLakeNetworks

PeterPan
Comes here often

my username: Peter1218

rhbirkelund
Kind of a big deal

Username: rbnielsen

 

I have my eye on that Concktail kit. 😄

antlac1-cr
Conversationalist

Username: antlac1

NBP
Conversationalist

Username: 0xdecafbad

MK2
Building a reputation

BuschfunkerMK2

LaurentUlmi
Conversationalist

Hello

 

my username LaurentU 

SSAY-AXS
Getting noticed

Username : SSAY-AXS

MMcGough
Conversationalist

@AmyReyes  are we able to compete as a team in our company or only as individuals? 

AmyReyes
Community Manager

Hi @MMcGough great question! You can team up with folks under a shared username, so you could compete as a team. Just please keep in mind that only one prize will be awarded per username 😄

riles0nic
Here to help

 Username: rileyp

MMcGough
Conversationalist

Username: mc0023

BradCroft
Comes here often

Username: bradcroft

ekramer
Getting noticed

techerkramer

 

I've been folding since the last challenge! I love to see this running, again.

RyGuy
Here to help

Great job guys and gals!

 

F@H User: Ryan_Ludwig

 

For anyone that folds/BOINC's regularly... Check out gridcoin! They give you crypto (GRC) based on how much you contribute to BOINC projects. It doesn't come anywhere close to offsetting the electricity costs but at least it's something. A vote just passed to tie in FAH work as well! 

 

Gridcoin ties your BOINC CPID to your wallet through a "beacon", a unique key that you temporarily flip one of your BOINC project usernames to. It's the ACME DNS challenge equivalent of inserting a unique DNS txt record to prove ownership and generate a SSL cert.

 

BOINC projects worth taking part in (IMO):

  • Rosetta@Home
    • Work: Protein Structure prediction
  • gpugrid (Has GPU Work Available)
    • Work: full-atom molecular biology simulations utilizing Nvidia CUDA cores. A lot of their recent research has been focused on incorporating pytorch based ML techniques found in ACEMD4
    • World Community Grid (Has GPU Work Available)
      • Work: Various problems in public health and clean energy

 

If you plan on deploying BOINC out to multiple clients. I highly recommend the management tool BoincTasks. It's UI looks like something out of the 90's but it's incredibly useful at managing BOINC clusters.

 

Happy Holidays!

SSAY-AXS
Getting noticed

@RyGuy 

Very good idea and very good initiative.

I am going to join the Bionc project

 

AmyReyes
Community Manager

UPDATE: we crunched the numbers and have our winners! Based on the scores earned between November 10th at 11am EST and December 9th at 11am EST, the top three winners rank as follows:

 

🥇1st Place: @NBP (aka 0xdecafbad) with 312,615,352 credits earned

🥈2nd Place: @NavyXC (aka navyxc) with 243,800,355 credits earned

🥉3rd Place: @RyGuy (aka Ryan_Ludwig) with 188,200,611 credits earned

 

In addition, we randomly selected three winners from the entrants to receive a pair of Meraki Community socks: @riles0nic@Hiciano, and @Shadius

 

Congratulations to all of our winners and a huge thanks to everyone who participated in helping to find a cure for Alzheimer's disease! Our closing rank as a team was 254 out of 255,607 and an impressive 46 for the month of December!

Inderdeep
Kind of a big deal

Congratulations to the winners ... @NBP @NavyXC @RyGuy @riles0nic@Hiciano, and @Shadius

riles0nic
Here to help

goodjob everyone! @NBP for 1st. @NavyXC for 2nd.

@RyGuy edged me out of 3rd place! 

Thanks for the experience, this is something I will continue to support and contribute to.

NetworkDemon
Getting noticed

Congrats to the winners !