Arizona State Snags Lecturer

Harvard will lose yet another prominent academic when proteonomics specialist and Medical School Lecturer Joshua LaBaer leaves for Arizona State University this June.

Earlier this year, LaBear received an offer from Arizona State University to head the newly-founded Virginia G. Piper Center for Personalized Diagnostics, where he was promised a sizeable research fund of $10 million and an 8,000 square-foot lab space to work with.

LaBaer, the founder and current director of the Institute of Proteomics at Harvard Medical School, is one of a handful of innovators in the relatively new field of proteomics, the study of protein structure and function.

He said that he wanted to accept the offer in order to focus more on his career goal: developing personalized medicine technologies that would allow doctors to treat patients by tailoring medicines to their individual genomes. LaBaer’s research in proteomics is a crucial towards realizing this treatment paradigm.

At ASU, he will work with the Scottsdale-based Piper Charitable Trust and the Phoenix-based Flinn Foundation, which are at the forefront of this venture. These foundations have already donated millions of dollars to the project.

LaBaer said that he was pleased to participate in such a riveting new project at Arizona State University.

“The Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University is an exciting program in which scientists and technology development people all over the country are going to gather to build something from ground up,” he said.

When asked about his decision to leave Harvard for an institution that is not traditionally regarded as a strong contender in biomedical research, LaBaer said that he would rise to the occasion.

“It’s precisely this that makes ASU a challenge but an remarkable opportunity,” he said.

The University administration said it has no current plans to replace LaBaer. The lecturer’s research will be halted in the meantime, and about half a dozen of his current staff will also transfer with him to ASU.