Mark D. LeBlanc

Professor of Computer Science

Degrees

Ph.D., M.S., University of New Hampshire
B.A., University of Maine
Vitae

Main Interests

Designing computational sytlistic experiments in novel domains including Anglo-Saxon literature and DNA.

Empowering biology faculty and students to learn to solve problems in sequence analysis by programming. Perl for Exploring DNA. (2007, Oxford University Press).

Research Interests

As part of an NEH grant with Drout (English) and Kahn (Math) and students Christina Nelson '11, Amos Jones '11, and Neil Kathok '10, we began work on exploring the Anglo-Saxon Corpus. A web server, named "lexomics", summarizes our work to date, including exportable word counts of every poem and prose text in the entire corpus and a "virtual manuscript" tool that allows the user to build and get statistics on their mixed and matched groups of texts.

The Genomics Group is an interdisciplinary team of faculty and students studying the DNA of various organisms, including work in genomic signatures and comparative genomics. Working in conjunction with faculty in biology, mathematics, and statistics who are involved in the Bioinformatics major, students and faculty in computer science run experiments and build new tools such as a DNA Dictionary for looking up your "favorite" DNA word.

Teaching Interests

Interdisciplinary Teaching in Genomics
  CS and Biology -- "Linking" courses, team-teaching
   DNA -- Teaching sequence analysis in Perl

New Courses
Storytelling Through Computer Animation
Discrete I for Computer Science
Computing for Poets -- RegEx, Perl, Anglo-Saxon Corpus, and Tolkien

Other Interests

Our six sons.
Camp in Maine.
Building field stone walls.
Reading biographies of each President in order (I'm presently reading Burns' "FDR", May 2009).
A year "down undah" ...

Student Projects

Recent Student Publications
Drout, M., Kahn, M., LeBlanc, M.D., Jones, A. '11, Kathok, N. '10, and Nelson, C. '11 (in press). Lexomics for Anglo-Saxon Literature. Old English Newsletter.

Benz, Steve '05, Grossman, Robbie '07, Dyer, B., and LeBlanc, M. (2004). Genomics Research and the Liberal Arts: Building a Database for Exploring Your Favorite Set of Genes (favGene v2.0). Transformations-Liberal Arts in the Digital Age, v2(1), May 2004.

Benz, Steve '05 and Cool, Jonah '04 (2003). Using Regular Expressions to Locate Putative Zinc Finger Binding Sites. Abstract appears in The Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges, v18(4).

Villa, Adam '03 (2003). Giving DNA a Trie. Abstract appears in The Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges, v18(4).

Student Software for Anglo-Saxon Scholarship
Pattern Recognition through Computational Stylistics: Old English and Beyond.

Student Software in Genomics
Building tools for scientists ...

Honors Theses
The Politics of Free: Open Source Software in Government.
Brian Donorfio '04

Supporting Analyses of Gene Regulation in DNA Neighborhoods
Adam Villa '03

Search Algorithms for Locating Potential Regulatory Motifs in the Promotors of the Kreb's Cycle Genes of Caenorhabditis elegans
Glen Aspeslagh '00

Utilizing a Genetic Algorithm to Search the Structure-space of Artificial Neural Networks for Optimal Architectures
Ken Aspeslagh '00

Service Learning
New database for information on 5000+ slides.
Norton Historical Society web page
Town of Norton prototype

Selected Publications, Creative Work or Performances

Book
LeBlanc, M.D. and Dyer, B.D. (2007). Perl for Exploring DNA. (Oxford University Press).

Select Publications
Drout, M., Kahn, M., LeBlanc, M.D., Jones, A. '11, Kathok, N. '10, and Nelson, C. '11 (in press). Lexomics for Anglo-Saxon Literature. Old English Newsletter.

Dyer, B.D., Kahn, M.J., and LeBlanc, M.D. (2007). Classification and Regression Tree (CART) analyses of genomic signatures reveal sets of tetramers that discriminate temperature optima of Archaea and Bacteria. Archaea 2:159-167.

LeBlanc, M.D. and Leibowitz, R. (2006). Discrete Partnership -- A case for a full-year of Discrete Math. Proceedings of 37th SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, Houston, TX, 313-317.

LeBlanc, M.D. and Dyer, B.D. (2004). Bioinformatics and Computing Curricula 2001 -- Why Computer Science is well positioned in a post-genomic world. ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, v36(4), Dec. 2004, 64-67.

Russell, S.W. and LeBlanc, M. (2004). Learning By Seeing By Doing: Arithmetic Word Problems. With Sylvia Weber-Russell (UNH). The Journal of the Learning Sciences, v13(2), 197-220.

Dyer, B.D., LeBlanc, M.D., Benz, S., Cahalan, P., Donorfio, B., Sagui, P.,
Villa, A., and Williams, G. (2004). A DNA motif lexicon: cataloguing and annotating sequences. In Silico Biology, v4, 0039. http://www.bioinfo.de/isb/2004/04/0039/


Recent Grants
LeBlanc, M. (PI), Drout, M. and Kahn, M. (July 2008 - June 2010). National Endowment for the Humanities NEH HD-50300-08 -- Pattern Recognition through Computational Stylistics: Old English and Beyond.

LeBlanc, M. and Dyer B. (May 2004 - May 2007). Two-year NSF grant: DUE-0340761 Teaching Genomics to Undergraduate Computer Science and Biology Majors: A model involving infusion and strategic linking. See Sample Educational Materials.


Recent Workshops and Talks
Fishing for patterns in a sea of texts: Lexomics for Anglo-Saxon Literature. Presented at the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists (with M. Drout, M. Kahn, and C. Nelson '11) at St. John, Newfoundland, Canada, July 25, 2009.

Palindromes in DNA Land. Presented at 'DNA and Health: Education, Community and Business Perspectives' (with B. Dyer) at the Center for the Advancement of Science Exploration, Bridgewater State College, February 5, 2009.

Alice in High School Land. Presented a hands-on introduction to the Alice programming environment to computing and mathematics teachers at Norton Public High School, Norton, MA, February 1, 2009.

Extremophiles and Spider Webs: Adventures in Genomics. Presented at 'Bringing Big Science to Small Schools: Genomics Curriculum Development Workshop' (with B. Dyer) at Vassar College, July 22, 2007.

Travels in "DNA Land" -- Approaching DNA sequence analysis with word play. Presented with Betsey Dyer (Biology, Wheaton College) at the 38th SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, Covington, KY, March 9, 2007.

Regular Expressions and DNA. Presented with Betsey Dyer (Biology, Wheaton College) at the National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education (NITLE) Bioinformatics Practicum (with B.Dyer), Bates College, June 20, 2006.

Travels in "DNA Land" -- Approaching DNA sequence analysis with word play. Presented with Betsey Dyer (Biology, Wheaton College) at the 37th SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, Houston, TX, March 3, 2006.