One-on-One

One-on-One with Alex Koglin

CO-FOUNDER AND CEO OF NEW MEXICO VENTURE STUDIOS

BY ELLEN MARKS FOR THE JOURNAL

Alex Koglin thinks a lot about the next pandemic. He also thinks about developing bioscience manufacturing to fight it. And, especially, he thinks about how to do that in New Mexico.

Koglin is the co-founder of New Mexico Venture Studios, which plans to open its first building early next year near the Albuquerque airport. It will offer vital lab and manufacturing spaces — as well as more mundane services such as back office support — for life sciences, deep tech and advanced manufacturing.

Koglin comes at it based on his own experience: trying to spin off his research on bacterial and drug resistance at Los Alamos National Laboratory, but having immense difficulty finding a manufacturing space to accommodate commercial production.

He started his company, Nature’s Toolbox, at Santa Fe Community College, but outgrew the space. After an extensive and difficult search, Koglin ended up moving to Rio Rancho.

What he learned from that experience was that bioscience tech startups would be more likely to stay in New Mexico rather than leave if they had a ready space with a clean room and other necessities.

“The learning experience from this, really, is that there’s a gap here,” says Koglin. “We basically have tremendous technology development between the national labs and the universities. There is a massive amount that goes into early research and development, and then we basically miss how to effectively take the technology out and turn it into companies.”

Koglin left Nature’s Toolbox to start his new project because he believes “manufacturing capacity, not development speed, (is) the critical bottleneck in pandemic preparedness.”

But Koglin, who pursued his research at Harvard and in his native Germany, is not solely focused on science. He also loves cars, mostly vintage ones, and not just one or two.

“I have a dozen,” he says. “I keep it limited.”

Whom do you envision as your clients?

Local startups … to help them set up early on in the right way. But really exciting is also companies from out of state that have an interest to move into an ecosystem … that can provide a network and resources. The first location is around 50,000 square feet. The vast majority of this will be lab space, because this is where we really have a gap. Six companies are committed.

We believe that we can be operational in the first quarter of next year.

What do you mean by an ecosystem?

We basically can create a crystallization core for this industry area, somewhere from which we can grow. Instead of basically spreading out, consolidating allows an exchange of ideas, exchange of concepts. It allows investors to engage easier. One of the biggest challenges that we experienced when we built (Nature’s Toolbox) was that visibility is incredibly hard to gain when you’re not located in one of the internationally recognized hubs. So by centralizing this, we can help startups, engineers and technologies … gain the visibility that they deserve.

What are you most excited about?

When I accepted a job in Los Alamos, I moved out here from Harvard Medical School in Boston. It took me a few weeks, but I noticed something that was somewhat disturbing. At the time, Los Alamos was, if not the wealthiest per capita, but among the wealthiest counties in the entire U.S., sitting right beside one of the poorest counties in the U.S. And I thought, “This is an imbalance that I can’t understand.” So it was clear from the beginning, when we built Nature’s Toolbox, the company would be formed in New Mexico. Now, what we’re really excited about is that (New Mexico Venture Studios) will basically diversify the job base in New Mexico. There will be highly specialized jobs in research and development and opportunities for manufacturing jobs.

Was the COVID-19 pandemic an impetus for this project?

Yes. It’s very simple. Over the last 90 years, we have seen a new pandemic around every 10 to 12 years, so it’s clear something is coming, right? In parallel, we see a massive development of drug resistance, primarily in TB. In a world approaching 9 billion increasingly mobile people, this reality becomes more urgent. The ability to experience different parts of our world is both a gift and a right, but it requires us to continuously adapt. Evolution doesn’t pause for human opinions or policies.

Tell me about your car collection. What do you drive?

It’s a mix. I have three Jaguars, two Porsches. They find me. It’s not my fault.

Who are your role models?

I wouldn’t say that it comes down to a single person. It comes down to seeing how people respond in certain situations — how they address questions, concerns or try to find answers. I was in the lucky situation that I met a large number of Nobel Prize laureates within the sciences. And seeing how they address questions that are thrown at them or challenges that they had in their field of expertise, and how they try to overcome this and learn pieces and pull them together. That’s actually the most amazing thing that I had the opportunity to see and to learn.

What’s your overall goal with Venture Studios?

The diversity of employment … is, I think, the most important goal we can all achieve because, at the end of the day, a diverse economy is a resilient economy. So all of a sudden it becomes clear, it is not just the universities and the national labs that provide employment, it is a large number of companies. So all of a sudden, the motivation to be great and successful in STEM education, I hope, is the result of it. That is nothing that I would ever claim for myself, but to see it is amazing.

What are some words of wisdom that have guided you?

Patience pays off. Persistence pays off. Arrogance is the worst adviser you can ever find.

Ellen Marks, a former Journal editor, writes One-on-One profiles and Scam Watch. You can reach her at emarks@abqjournal. com.