Robin Prentice (left) and Jesse Gray: 'I'm passionate about understanding the big picture and ensuring everyone is successful.'
For Robin Prentice, her 25-plus-year career in science and operations management has been bookended by positions with fascinating start-ups.
In August of 1998, after completing the equivalent of a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology at the University of Oslo in Norway, she was recruited to join GenoVision, an innovative biotechnology company focused on automation using magnetic bead technologies. Prentice was the firm’s fourth employee and was hired to start a lab.
“On my first day, my boss said, ‘Here’s a stack of catalogues, build a lab,’” she said. “So, I just built a lab.”
And later, with the lab finished, Prentice wrote some of the automation protocols, beta tested them, and later, she traveled to install the robotic systems. And later, she created brochures to market them.
“Initially I was doing everything, Prentice said. “They would put me on a plane with 12 hours’ notice and I’d be flying to California to fix a broken robot.”
Fast forward to January of 2024, when BBI Scientific Director Jay Shendure recruited Prentice to serve as Director of Operations for the newly established Seattle Hub for Synthetic Biology (SeaHub).
Like GenoVision, she was one of the first people hired at what is, essentially, a start-up – building cellular recording technology to capture live data from cells responding to their environment. It is a first-ever collaboration among the BBI, the University of Washington, the Allen Institute, and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Prentice is employed by the BBI at UW but is fully embedded at the Allen Institute.
“One of the greatest challenges operationally has been making the collaboration seamless across multiple organizations,” Prentice said, “so the scientists can do their work – unimpeded – across two institutions. “
Enabling such collaboration requires knowledge of the science, excellent management and budget skills, and the ability to envision long term objectives, as well as shorter term project goals.
Her SeaHub colleague Jesse Gray believes Robin is uniquely equipped for the role. “Robin is a Ph.D.-trained scientist who knows how to run an operation, from budget to project management to laboratory operations,” said Gray, SeaHub’s Senior Director of Strategy and Platform. “She knows how to use a budget as an instrument to achieve a mission – rather than letting the budget manage her. She can spot trouble a mile away. She’s got the judgment to handle challenges.”
My father gave me a biology book for children. I read it cover to cover and was fascinated.
How did Prentice, born and raised in Seattle, discover a love of science that led her to eventually direct the business of SeaHub’s complex operations? The answer begins when she was 9 years old when her father, a landscape architect, gave her a gift.
“My father gave me a biology book for children,” she said. “I read it cover to cover and was fascinated. What I thought was just amazing nature stories was all the chapters of a biology book. I still have it.”
Later, as a UW freshman, Prentice took a botany class that solidified her decision to study biology. She later moved to Kansas and, in 1989, completed a Bachelor of Science in Cellular Biology, Magna Cum Laude, from the University of Kansas. She abandoned fields of wheat for fjords carved by glaciers, living in Norway for 12 years to complete a Master’s and Ph.D. and to launch her career.
After biotech firm Qiagen acquired GenoVision, Prentice stayed on to lead the development and launch of new products for automated DNA isolation for clinical and diagnostic markets. With her scientific knowledge and communications expertise, she served as primary liaison between Qiagen’s R&D and marketing departments.
She returned to the Pacific Northwest in 2003 to join the Genome Center at the UW as a Senior Research Scientist & Groups Manager. In 2007 she made an important career transition to project management and the business of science. She worked for 12 years supporting the Seattle Structural Genomics Center for Infectious Disease in South Lake Union.
In September of 2019, Prentice returned to the UW and joined BBI to support the Seattle Flu Study, a project funded by Gates Ventures, to examine how epidemic and pandemic outbreaks are detected, monitored, and controlled. It was prophetic; three months later reports began emanating from Wuhan, China about a new upper-respiratory disease: COVID-19.
The study pivoted rapidly to become the first SARS-CoV-2 surveillance platform in the U.S. and Prentice collaborated with the program’s principal investigators and more than 10 project managers and research coordinators across the UW, Seattle Children’s, and Fred Hutch to support management of the testing program.
Today, Prentice divides her time at SeaHub between the Allen and the BBI. She likes “having two families” and the challenges and opportunities to make both fee like one.
“I’m passionate about understanding the big picture and ensuring everyone is successful.”
