While the Larta project was winding down, Rankin started talks about an entrepreneurial project with one of his former KGI roommates that would become OceanAgro LLC, a specialty chemicals startup. “We opened it up and empowered the second round of interns by allowing them to understand the business context,” Rankin said.
#CALL GENEIOUS PRIME PROFESSIONAL#
He was then given the freedom to run the program, much like a KGI Team Master’s Project, by connecting the interns doing the scouting with the industry professional who provided the technical need statement. “They would ask me to, for example, find interesting technology related to lithium-ion, and I would have no idea about the application-which is hard if you don’t know if you are talking about batteries for a cellphone or a car.”Īfter his internship was complete, Larta asked Rankin to take over as Project Lead for the final iteration. “It was a difficult process in the beginning,” Rankin said. This ultimately led to his first paid position after graduation. For example, an internship in China had him working on a technology scouting project, transforming submissions of varying shapes and quality into polished deliverables for Pfizer.Īdditionally, he worked as a technology scout for Larta Institute on the NSF-funded Inter-University Technology Bundling Program (IUTBP) during his second year at KGI. Rankin has held an eclectic series of jobs and internships, each with its own learning curves, challenges, and growth opportunities. He has since been exposed to nearly every level of the drug development pipeline through the lens of the biopharma tools and services space: discovery, preclinical, translational medicine and clinical research, and clinical operations. KGI opened up a whole new world to Rankin. “There weren’t a lot of opportunities for me in the South with an applied biotechnology major,” Rankin said. He knew that California (and KGI) was a better fit for him than staying in Georgia, where he briefly worked as an analytical chemist at a factory making Johnson & Johnson products prior to obtaining his MBS. Rankin has long pursued an unconventional route since completing his undergraduate science training at the University of Georgia.
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“KGI taught me how to deal with complex, chaotic environments with a lot of moving parts, team projects, and learning as you go,” Rankin said.
He attributes his interesting career trajectory to his experience in Keck Graduate Institute (KGI)’s Master of Business and Science (MBS) program.Įven though Rankin graduated in the immediate aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, he believes that not only was KGI worth his investment but that his education enabled him to navigate the challenges of entering an unstable economy-and the subsequent years of launching new products for a diverse range of biotech tools companies.
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After relocating from the Bay Area to Amsterdam in August 2020, his bioinformatics software startup, ConnextBio, has exited beta. Robert Rankin, MBS ’09, has recently embarked on a new adventure.
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