According to Dr. Mark A. Turco, president and CEO of the Rhode Island Life Science Hub, the moment is now only weeks away.

“It’s a very exciting and big year for the state of Rhode Island,” Turco said.

Speaking with the Globe, Turco discussed the lab’s inaugural year ahead, funding, and the pitch he makes to attract companies to the capital city.

Q. What’s it like to finally be arriving at this moment after years in the making?

Turco: Specifically, about Ocean State Labs at 150 Richmond St. in Providence, we have the infrastructure here that can provide companies with resources that many founders could not find in the state, and that caused companies to move out of the area.

It’s really exciting now to have this physical space supporting the pathways from discovery all the way through commercialization.

In September, you announced these five inaugural companies that will move into Ocean State Labs during the first quarter of 2026. Have any moved in yet?

Our first four companies – OncoLux, Inc., Pax Therapeutics, XM Therapeutics, and P53 Therapeutics – will actually move in Feb. 2, and the facility received its certificate of occupancy just prior to the end of this last calendar year. So the month of January here has been really doing some punch list items and moving furniture in and getting the facility ready for science.

The entire lab space can accommodate up to 30 companies. Has the roster grown beyond the inaugural five?

There’s actually six companies that have signed leases to move in, and there are a number of others that are in the pipeline.

What’s the pitch you make to companies about moving to Providence?

One, this is a great state to come and work in. Two, it is also an opportunity for a company coming in to leverage the resources of our academic institutions, as well as leveraging our growing workforce that is becoming more and more experienced in the life science sector. One thing that resonates with companies on the smaller side is that a company moving here to Rhode Island can be a big fish in a small pond.

I think our story is pretty compelling. My hope is that Rhode Island is seen in the life science sector as somebody that could house and manage and work with entities from inception all the way through to commercialization.

The Rhode Island Life Science Hub launched with a $45 million investment from the General Assembly in 2023 and it’s going to need another round of funding this year. What have you heard from lawmakers?

We have submitted an operational budget [and] a capital budget. What we do know is that in the governor’s budget, there is an innovation bond that will be upwards of $115 million that [Rhode Island] Commerce will oversee for defense, marine, and life sciences. So my hope is if the voters were to move forward with approval of the bond, that would give us an opportunity to continue to build out what we are working to do and have done to this date. It’s still a bit unclear where we stand with regards to operational and capital budget requests.

Are you concerned about not being able to get that kind of investment?

As a president and CEO, if you weren’t always concerned about your funding, that would be of concern. But I feel very confident that we will continue to have support to drive these initiatives. The speaker, the governor, the General Assembly, our federal delegations here have been incredibly supportive to date. We as a hub and certainly through our board of directors have had regular conversations with state leadership about continuing the vital work of the Rhode Island Life Science Hub.

What’s your vision for what the incubator will look like at the end of its inaugural year?

My hope is that our incubator becomes a very vibrant community of companies and innovators, and that as we move through this calendar year, there continues to be great work and that some of these companies continue to mature within the Ocean State Labs environment.

We’ve now provided state-of-the-art infrastructure in our state. Let’s work these companies that are now part of that ecosystem to really help them mature.

This interview has been condensed and edited for length and clarity.

The Boston Globe’s weekly Ocean State Innovators column features a Q&A with Rhode Island innovators who are starting new businesses and nonprofits, conducting groundbreaking research, and reshaping the state’s economy. Send tips and suggestions to rinews@globe.com.

Christopher Gavin can be reached at christopher.gavin@globe.com.

Anthony Barile of Cranston, RI passed away, peacefully at home on January 16, 2026, surrounded by his loving family. He was born on September 19, 1937, to the late John Barile and Anna Vitello. He was the brother of the late Loretta Matrone and Marion Camuso, and Dorothy Santilli of Lincoln, RI. He was the beloved husband of the late Judith A. Barile to whom he had been married for 65 years. He is survived by his loving children Deborah Letourneau (R. Michael) of Warwick, RI, Robert Barile (Murriam) of Gloucester, MA, and Karen Barile-Lyons (Thomas) of Cranston, RI. He was the devoted grandfather of Michael Letourneau, Nicole Sobolewski, Heather Lyons, and Brittany Leger, and the great grandfather of Connor and Bennet Letourneau and Lainey and Kody Bergsten

After graduating from Classical High School, he attained a Bachelor’s Degree from Providence College and a Master’s Degree from the University of Rhode Island. Mr. Barile was the State’s Medical Director for many years and became the Director of the Department of Human Services in 1989. During his career in state service, he served on many Executive and Legislative Committees in the health care area and was a member of the Health Services Council for 5 years.

Mr. Barile was vice chair of the State Medicaid Directors National Organization and the recipient of the Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council Robert M. Goodrich Distinguished Public Service Award in 1988.

He retired from a 30-year career in State Service in 1990 and took a position in the private sector as the Vice President of Operations for Health Management Services, a company that managed nursing homes. In 2010, he became the President of that company and assumed the role of President of Hopkins Manor, a 200-bed nursing home located in North Providence, RI.

During his career in the private sector, he served on the Board of Directors of the Rhode Island Health Care Association as treasurer and Vice Chair. In 2008 he received the Chairs Award from that association in recognition of his contributions to the delivery of quality care in R.I. Nursing Homes.

Mr. Barile who received the Humanitarian Award from the Grodin Center in 1986 enjoyed assisting individuals and organizations achieve their goals. Although Mr. Barile enjoyed receiving awards and recognition during his professional career, his greatest source of pride and satisfaction came from the prominent and supportive role he played in the higher education achievements of his 3 children and 4 grandchildren, as they attained Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees.

His greatest leisure time activity was playing golf. He was a long-time member of the Cranston Country Club and most enjoyed playing golf there with his fellow members of the Ocean State Golf League that he ran for a number of years. Mr. Barile’s golfing highlight came on May 12, 2015, when he was fortunate enough to score a hole-in-one on the 12th hole at the Cranston Country Club.

His Mass of Christian Burial will be held on Thursday January 22, 2026, at 11:00 am at Holy Apostles Church,800 Pippin Orchid Rd. Cranston. Burial will be in St. Ann Cemetery. VISITING HOURS will be held from 8:30 – 10:00 am at the NARDOLILLO FUNERAL HOME & Crematory, 1278 Park Ave., Cranston. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to the Holy Apostles Church Memorial Society, 800 Pippin Orchard Road, Cranston, RI 02921.

The mysterious buyer of a Wyoming ranch four times larger than New York City and bigger than the state of Rhode Island has been identified as a chief executive officer and local politician who already owns a million acres of land.

Christopher Robinson, the CEO of Ensign Group L.C., scooped up the massive 916,000-acre Pathfinder Ranches on behalf of the landholding company and closed the deal on Jan. 14, according to KPCW.

Robinson purchased the land for an undisclosed amount, only four years after he bought the neighboring Stone Ranch.

The massive property, which rolls across 1,431-square-miles, was listed over the summer by Swan Land Company broker Scott Williams for a whopping $79.5 million. New York City spans across 300.4 square miles, while Rhode Island spans 1,033.9.

Spreading across four counties in the Rocky Mountains, the Pathfinder Ranches is made up of four separate properties and encompasses over 1% of the land in the Cowboy State.

Actual deedage acreage of the historic purchase added up to 99,188 acres with the additional land coming from leases, according to the Cowboy State Daily.

The Park City, Utah resident is using the smaller ranch to bridge together the Pathfinder Ranches properties and create a self-sustainable livestock range.

“So, we’re kind of reuniting that, and we intend to, we’re operators,” Robinson told the outlet. “We’re not generally landlords. We’re going to, over time, grow into it, where we’re mostly running our own livestock on it.”

Robinson plans to work the property’s livestock to become self-sufficient rather than buying from outside the ranch.

The land was estimated to have a capacity of 90,444 Animal Unit Months, the amount of livestock a rangeland can support.

“With cattle prices as high as they are, we’re not going to be buying any mother cows to stock,” he said. “We keep a lot of heifers back anyway, so we’re going to grow internally.”

“If things get really tough, we’ll get rid of yearlings,” he said. “But we don’t get rid of mother cows. There have been droughts and things in the past, but we’ve got enough scale and flexibility that we can sell the yearlings.”

The Ensign Group, co-owned by Robinson and his siblings Alexander and Victoria Robinson, has acquired over 1 million acres of private and public lands throughout Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming under the Ensign Ranches moniker.

Before the massive purchase, the Robinson and Freed portfolio ranked at number 31 on Land Report Magazine’s Top 100 Landowner List.

Pathfinder Ranches may push the group’s portfolio to over 470,000 acres up 10 spots on the list and surpassing billionaire Jeff Bezos’ own impressive 462,000 acres, according to KPCW.

“We love land and water. We think it’s a good long-term investment, and we like the opportunities it affords us to be stewards over a piece of God’s creation,” Robinson said.

Robinson, a graduate from the University of Utah, is one of the five members of the Summit County Council, a seat he has held since his election in 2008, according to the county’s website.

He has extensive experience in production agriculture, local government, mineral and resource development, public lands, renewable energy and conservation efforts.

In December, Robinson announced that he would not run for reelection.

Robinson is also on the board of several conservation and land groups in the Utah area.

The newly purchased land is also home to a diverse ecosystem of wildlife including housing the US’s first sage-grouse conservation bank.”

“It’s a statewide bank that, if there’s any damage to, disturbance to, core habitat for greater sage-grouse, one option for mitigation would be to buy credits from the Pathfinder,” Robinson told the outlet. “[The property has] got a lot of sage grouse on it, a lot of antelope, pronghorn, deer and elk. It’s teeming with life.”

The property, named after rolling foothills, high plains and broad river valleys, is a cowboy’s dream and one of Swan Land’s largest sales in Wyoming.

“This is what we specialize in are the large complicated transactions,” Williams told the Cowboy State Daily. “And the beauty of this is the buyers are excellent ranchers, but they’re also conservation-minded operators as well.

“That’s a plan that will take some time to realize,” Robinson said.