He studied aerospace engineering at Masschusetts Institute of Technology. After he received his degree, he landed at Boeing and worked on commercial aircraft. His interest in design led him to computer graphics and eventually a master's degree in computer science from the University of Washington. He joined ISB in 2003. In the summer of 2012, Longabaugh received a National Institutes of Health grant to develop BioTapestry, an open-source, freely available software tool for the modeling and visualization of genetic regulatory networks. He also developed BioFabric, an elegant tool that presents traditional node-link diagrams as horizontal and vertical lines.