Protean Futures LLC

Protean Futures LLC offers high-value consulting services in the following areas:

  1. zinc finger-DNA recognition; gene regulation and genome editing; protein design; biotechnology; and nanotechnology.
  2. novel organizational and conceptual strategies for solving complex interdisciplinary problems.

Protean Futures LLC is developing conceptual tools and strategies that can help model the broader flow and development of thought as it arises in a complex physical world. These models will provide the foundations for a dual-mode analysis of research strategies in many different fields of human knowledge, allowing us to evaluate theories not only in light of current rules of evidence and argument, but also in light of a second frame which acknowledges the physical foundations and processes via which these theories arise. Grounding ourselves more equally in these dual frames should help us learn how to think more realistically about many of the complex problems facing both modern science and modern society.


Dr. Carl O. Pabo has made seminal contributions to studies on the structure and design of DNA-binding proteins. He received his B.S. (summa cum laude) from Yale in 1974 and his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1980. Dr. Pabo has been a Professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (1982-1991) and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1991-2001) and an Investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (1986-2001). He was Chief Scientific Officer at Sangamo BioSciences from 2001-2003 and then worked on theories of thought as a Visiting Professor at Cal Tech, Stanford, Berkeley, and Harvard and as a Guggenheim Fellow. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.