How scientists can support COVID-19 research from home
As the corona virus (COVID-19) pandemic continues, scientists around the world have set up virtual projects to collaborate, share knowledge, resources and data to support drug discovery.
Here we list collaborative projects which you can contribute to – even if you’re working from home.
If you know about another project not listed here please email us at and we will continue to add to this list.
You can also check our other blogs about COVID-19.
Industry Report: Will COVID-19 spark a data revolution in drug discovery?
This report explores how the lessons learnt on collaboration and data integration could change how the pharmaceutical industry works, with practical steps and case studies.
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Crowdfight COVID-19
This project is linking volunteers from all areas of STEM to projects fighting the virus. Register with your contact details and area of expertise and the organisers will contact you if there is a project you can support.
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PostEra COVID-19
(aka COVID Moonshot)
This collaboration has several ways you can contribute.
If you have experience in drug design, you are invited to submit your molecule designs based on fragments. At the time of writing over 750 moecules had been submitted.
Alternatively you can donate via GoFundMe to support the synthesis and testing of compounds once initial computational work is complete.
Finally virologists with access to assays are invited to contact the organisers directly.
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COVID-19 Open Research Dataset Challenge
(aka CORD-19)
This project invites AI scientists to develop text and data mining tools to look at the large CORD-19 dataset. Broken into smaller tasks, the project is a huge collaboration between various companies and organisations including The White House.
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Elsevier Open Access data
The publisher Elsevier have set up this hub information center with around 20,000 papers related to the virus openly available to access.
Additionally, the full text can be downloaded for further data mining and analysis.
In this blog Ian Bruno has used the CSD Python API to extract the CSD structures mentioned in each paper. See the list an access the structures on the open access WebCSD here.
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CoronaHack – AI vs COVID-19
This virtual hackathon will bring together scientists from different disciplines and across industry and academia with one common goal. Access to datasets and tools will also be shared in this event by Mindstream-AI and the UK Knowledge Transfer Network.
Register to receive further details as they emerge.
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COVID Symptom Tracker
Rather than scientific input, this project is looking to crowdsource information on the severity and spread of the virus. They also welcome self-reporting of healthy people with no symptoms for a complete analysis.
Download the app to self-report symptoms and contribute to the huge study being jointly run by King’s College London, Guy’s and St Thomas’ hospitals and ZOE.
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Folding at home
Here the organisers are looking for computer power rather than scientific input. By downloading the Folding at Home software you can donate surplus power on your laptop or PC to run calculations and simulations investigating the proteins and drugs of interest.
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Share this blog with your network to spread the word and ensure more scientists contribute to these fantastic projects.
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If you know of another project our community may be able to support get in touch via to tell us and we’ll update this list.
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