Five things you should know about Robert Urban

Josh Reynolds for the Boston Globe

Robert G. Urban heads the two-year-old Johnson & Johnson Innovation Center in the heart of Cambridge’s Kendall Square. Before joining J&J, he was executive director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. Urban, 52, grew up in Houston, earned undergraduate and doctoral degrees from the University of Texas, and was an Irvington Fellow in structural immunology at Harvard University. Scientific American recently listed him among its “Top 100 Most Visionary Leaders” in biotechnology. He spoke recently with reporter Robert Weisman.

1Since the J&J Innovation Center opened its doors in 2013, Urban and his team have made more than 50 investments in consumer health, medical device, and biopharmaceutical startups in the United States and Canada. Most have been in the Boston area, but some have been in New York, Toronto, St. Louis, and elsewhere. J&J is also a founding partner in LabCentral, the life sciences incubator that offers shared laboratory space outside Kendall Square.

“You know, I worried about health care and health care innovation — the health of health care — for a long time. How can we find new ways to make transformative products possible for the world? And when J&J was thinking through what this innovation initiative was going to look like, I was convinced that I could help bring the power of J&J and really put it alongside entrepreneurs and alongside startups to help them be more successful.”

2Urban, an avid runner and outdoors enthusiast who’s run about a dozen marathons, is not much for sitting still. Perpetually on the go, he prefers to work standing up at an adjustable desk when he’s in the office. He’s done so since the innovation center launched. Many of the office’s 35 employees, following the lead of their boss, also stand at their desks.

“It’s two years and counting. I love it. You know, we have to move around a bit, so I can’t say I’m standing there very often. But when I am, I find it to be a nice way to engage in work. . . . I don’t know that I can say I have a definitive improvement in [health] as a derivative of my stand-up desk. But I’ve convinced myself it’s a format that works for me.

3Entrepreneurship is in his genes. Urban comes from an entrepreneurial Texas family involved in real estate, construction, agricultural, and investment businesses.

He launched the first company of his own — Visual Plastics, which made bathroom and kitchen products, such as acrylic-based tables and stands — when he was 15. After studying science and medicine at Texas and Harvard, he led a biotech startup called Pangaea Pharmaceuticals that he eventually sold. But he continued to work in the biopharmaceutical industry.

“I’ve been passionate about innovation in science that leads to products. I went to train to be a scientist, and I got lured into making pharmaceutical products, taking that research capability and advancing it into things that can be made useful.”

4He met his wife, Mary Lynne Hedley, the founder and chief scientific officer of biotechnology company Tesaro Inc. in Waltham, when they both were researchers at Harvard. They have three sons who have often accompanied them on family mountain climbing vacations around the world, from Machu Picchu in Peru to Mount Elbrus in Russia. They have their sights set next on Mount Aconcagua in Argentina.

“To me, it’s all about experiencing the world we live in.” Before they were husband and wife, Urban and Hedley were fellow biomedical researchers. “We met each other at Harvard and started our first biotech together. She was working at a different bench around the corner.”

5Urban is an avid blogger. His personal blog, titled “What’s ‘In’ Innovation,” is about the process of innovating.

“I tend to think of it as the facts and fiction of what health care innovation is all about. It’s about the people, the purpose, and the possibilities of innovation. There’s a lot of nuance that’s required for things to weave their way through the challenges that stand between a remarkable discovery and something that’s a transformative product that can make a difference in people’s lives. I’m fascinated by those things.”