Biography
Dr. Carl O. Pabo’s research in biophysics made him a world leader on the structure and design of DNA-binding proteins. However, impelled by deeper questions about the meaning and limits of human knowledge, he resigned his academic appointments to work on “theories of thought.”
After years of work needed to develop a better way of modeling and monitoring thought, Dr. Pabo has developed a set of strategies that he refers to as Thought++. These ideas offer new ways of thinking, new ways of addressing our global problems, and new hope for the human future.
In 2017, Dr. Pabo founded Humanity 2050, a nonprofit institute dedicated to ensuring a livable human future in the world of 2050 and beyond. Work at Humanity 2050 focuses on practical applications and real-world progress, using these new strategies of thought to help address some of the most complex challenges of the modern world.
Carl Pabo received his B.S. from Yale in 1974 (summa cum laude) and his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1980. He has been a Professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (1982-1991) and MIT (1991-2001), and an Investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (1986-2001). While beginning work on these new theories of thought, Dr. Pabo had a Guggenheim Fellowship and appointments as a Visiting Professor at Caltech, Stanford, Berkeley, and the Harvard Medical School (2004-2007). In 2017, he returned to Caltech as a Visiting Professor to teach a course on “The World in 2050.” He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
