AMD has donated access to high-end computing to two Computational Biology Department faculty members, Christopher Langmead and Min Xu, to assist them in research projects related to COVID-19.

Langmead, an associate professor, is modeling the evolutionary landscape of coronavirus proteins, which will enable the design of a vaccine capable of protecting against both the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 and other coronavirus species.

Xu, an assistant professor, is using an artificial intelligence technique he developed to automate the large-scale analysis of SARS-CoV-2 images produced via Cryo-ET, a 3D visualization tool for studying subcellular structures and the virus' infection process in host cells.

"AMD is proud to be working with leading global research institutions to bring the power of high-performance computing technology to the fight against the coronavirus pandemic," said Mark Papermaster, executive vice president and chief technology officer for AMD. Thus far, AMD has contributed 12 petaflops of total supercomputing capacity — either high-end systems or access to cloud-based clusters — to 21 institutions and research facilities.