As director of industry partnerships and project-based learning at the University of Georgia’s College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences (CAES), Chris Rhodes will facilitate CAES’s participation in the university’s Innovation District initiative. The Innovation District is envisioned as “a dynamic ecosystem of places, programs and people working together to foster innovation, entrepreneurship and experiential learning” at UGA.
The Innovation District will be a vehicle for bringing together initiatives from many areas — including the CAES FABricate program. It will foster UGA technology transfer and faculty startup formation and create opportunities for companies and startups to engage with students through project-based learning.
At CAES, Rhodes will act as a liaison with the agriculture industry, facilitating interactions between industry partners, students and faculty.
Rhodes joins CAES after nearly six years with AGCO Corp., where he served in a variety of global leadership roles in business development, innovation, partnerships and strategy. Prior to AGCO, he spent more than eight years in strategic planning and project management with John Deere.
While earning his MBA at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, Rhodes co-founded Precision BioSciences, a biotechnology company that specializes in gene editing for plant science and human therapeutics. He earned a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry and molecular biology from Dartmouth College.
CAES is one of the top programs of its kind in the world, and the breadth of agricultural activities in Georgia provides UGA a unique opportunity to build a leading environment of entrepreneurship and public-private partnership.
Chris Rhodes