The Department is pleased to announce that Thom LaBean, a member of the CS Department since 1998, has been promoted to Research Professor.

On April Fools’ Day in 1993, LaBean joined the Duke family not as a CS professor, but as a postdoc in the Biochemistry Department. Almost five years later, LaBean was drawn into the field of computer science by DNA-based computing – using DNA molecules to store and manipulate non-biological information. “I’d always been around people who think of biochemistry in terms that are shared with computer science, like information storage, computing, and function,” says LaBean, so the transition was an easy jump. Today, LaBean holds secondary appointments in Chemistry and Biomedical Engineering.

Since then, LaBean has made a name for himself in the field of DNA-based nanofabrication – using DNA to build nanotechnologies like tiny single-electron transistors and nanomaterials that interact with light. “We can stack DNA helices in any geometry we want,” says LaBean. “We can also make attachments between DNA and any other functional material we are interested in,” such as proteins, metals, and carbon nanotubes, he adds.

LaBean’s research has also taken him into the medical field, developing nanoparticles for drug delivery and small DNA sequences able to bind and inhibit proteins in the bloodstream to slow clotting. In 2005, LaBean helped found the American Academy of Nanomedicine and has been a reviewer and committee member for numerous journals and conferences. He has published widely in journals such as Science, PNAS, Nano Letters, and Nature.

In 2009, LaBean co-founded Sequenomics, a biotech startup based in Durham developing tools to map the distribution of physicochemical properties within protein sequence space. “It’s a way to go back to my roots in protein engineering,” says LaBean.