Adrien Treuille — Building Blazingly Fast Tools That People Love

Foldit

Adrien shares the story behind Foldit, a game designed to tackle the challenging problem of protein folding. He explains how the game transformed a complex scientific issue into an engaging activity that attracted over a million participants worldwide. This crowdsourced effort led to significant scientific insights, demonstrating the power of human intuition in solving computational problems 1.

Over a million people contributed to this really profound scientific problem all over the world.

--- Adrien Treuille

Adrien emphasizes that the game's success was not just about beating computers but about fostering a community that generated innovative ideas and shifted the game design 2.

   

Eterna

Following Foldit, Adrien developed Eterna, a game focused on RNA folding. Unlike Foldit, Eterna used high-throughput synthesis to build molecules designed by players, integrating real-world experiments into the gameplay. This approach allowed players to contribute to cutting-edge RNA research, including efforts related to COVID-19 3.

The real innovation in Eterna is that rather than just do everything in simulation on a computer, we were actually using high throughput synthesis to build the molecules being designed by the players.

--- Adrien Treuille

Adrien notes that the human element in these games led to unexpected scientific discoveries, such as identifying stable RNA motifs, which have yet to be fully automated by machines 4.