Proteins control nearly all of life’s functions, but how they self-assemble, or fold, is an unsolved problem in biology. Understanding how folding goes awry could lead to cures for diseases caused by protein misfolding, like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Stanford chemistry Professor Vijay Pande’s project Folding@home borrows computing time from home computers to simulate how proteins fold. By modeling protein folding, Pande says, “We hope to get exquisite detail and information that you might not be able to get from experiments.”