Dr. José Onuchic and Dr. Peter Wolynes, Co-Directors of the Center for Theoretical Biological Physics at Rice University, have been awarded a high-performance computing system from AMD and Penguin Computing to pursue research on coronavirus. Dr. Onuchic’s group, basing studies on previous research on influenza A, will examine how coronavirus’s surface proteins facilitate entrance to human cells, while Dr. Wolynes’ lab will use their expertise on protein folding to screen potential drug molecules as candidates for clinical tests.

NYU and MIT were also awarded computing systems. The systems include both on-site processors and cloud-based systems. The combined computing power of the donated systems will provide researchers with more than seven petaflops.

For more information, the AMD announcement can be found here.