Carl O. Pabo is a biophysicist. He is the founder and president of Humanity 2050, a nonprofit institute.

Education

*B.S. (summa cum laude) from

Yale Yale University is a private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, and one of the nine colonial colleges ch ...

, Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry in 1974 *Ph.D. from

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher lear ...

, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in 1980.

Career

Pabo has been a professor at the

Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (JHUSOM) is the medical school of Johns Hopkins University, a Private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Established in 1893 following the construction of the Johns Ho ...

(1982–1991) and at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

(1991–2001) and an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (1986–2001). He's been a visiting professor at Caltech, Stanford, Berkeley and Harvard. At Caltech, he taught a course called “The World in 2050.” In 1991, he used X-ray crystallography to show how

Zinc finger nuclease Zinc-finger nucleases (ZFNs) are artificial restriction enzymes generated by fusing a zinc finger DNA-binding domain to a nuclease, DNA-cleavage domain. Zinc finger domains can be engineered to target specific desired DNA sequences and this enab ...

s attach to DNA. In 1994, after moving to the MIT, he showed how zinc fingers could be custom built to grab onto any desired three-base pair DNA sequence. This was an important step toward building the full library of zinc fingers for all 64 sequences. He was chief scientific officer at Sangamo BioSciences from 2001–2003. In 2018, he founded Humanity 2050 to “to advocate a more comprehensive, coherent way of thinking about the human future.” He also serves as a scientific advisor for NanoDimension.

Awards and honors

Pabo became a

Guggenheim Fellow Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon individuals who have demonstrated d ...

in 2005. He is a member of the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the ...

and of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...

. Was awarded the

Pfizer Award in Enzyme Chemistry The Pfizer Award in Enzyme Chemistry, formerly known as the Paul-Lewis Award in Enzyme Chemistry was established in 1945. Consisting of a gold medal and honorarium, its purpose is to stimulate fundamental research in enzyme chemistry by scientists ...

in 1992. He has also won the Protein Society Young Investigator Award and the Pfizer Award in enzymology.Four professors elected to NAS membership
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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pabo, Carl 1952 births Living people Yale University alumni Harvard University alumni Johns Hopkins University faculty Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences American biochemists Fellows of the American Academy of Microbiology