Clad in khaki shorts, a brightly colored t-shirt and sporting shoulder length hair, Bert Bogden, President and CEO of Amplicon Express in Pullman, looks more like a surfer or maybe a backpacker, than the leader of a world-known successful DNA sequencing laboratory.  After a quick visit though, it is obvious that this man is passionate about science, his business, the team of people he works with, and the community that helped him make it all happen.

Bogden grew up near Salt Lake City, Utah. He never considered himself a good student and picked economics as a major while attending the University of Utah because there were a lot sample tests available in the study lab, he said. He switched his major to biology only one quarter before graduation, when a last-minute required Biology class peaked his interest.

“I’d always considered myself “Math-Tarded” he said. “I wasn’t sure I could do it.”

He started over, diving into math classes with a vengeance during the summer quarter, and continuing on in the fall. It was during his second college experience he became involved in research and eventually found himself working with a team of people searching for the first breast cancer gene. That experience, including the discovery of the gene (BRCA-1), would propel him into a world of microscopic details, never contemplated by most of society.

Now, years later, Bogden still focuses on that unseen world that makes up everything known to man. Amplicon Express Inc., established in 1996, is a privately owned molecular biology service company providing tools to tackle genome research. Located in Pullman, Washington, one wonders how did this science genius end up in what many would consider, rural Washington.

“We had offers from all over the U.S.,” Bogden said, describing the moving of his company. His wife, at the time, was offered a research position at the University of Idaho and Bogden visited the area with her. “With two universities in your backyard, it was built in business,” he said in his usual animated style.

Bogden struck a deal with Washington State University’s research park and moved his business in. It was ideal, he said. With free Internet and expansion opportunities, the company doubled in size and income every year for five years.  “When I started I was doing everything from licking the stamps to the research, then I started to hire,” he said.

As the company grew Bogden eventually knew it was time to build his own building. With no outside investors, he had to make his money work hard. He eventually landed in a 6,300 square foot building in the Port of Whitman Industrial Park in Pullman. The building was smaller than he wanted, but again, there was room for expansion, and the cost was right.

Now, 10 years after being established the company is ready to expand again. In the next few years they will be breaking ground on a 14,000 square foot addition to house additional freezer storage for the growing DNA libraries that have made the company a success. The addition will allow for more research space as well.

With 12 employees, making good salaries and benefits, Bogden considers his company to be the perfect model of what can happen when conditions are right. The research park was key to making it all happen, he said, as was the Port of Whitman. Investments from the State in the new BioScience building at WSU means the region is on the brink of growth in the bioscience and technology fields, according to Bogden, and he plans to be right there to help it happen in whatever way he can.

With a zest and passion for the work he loves, and the experience of making it in the bioscience field, this khaki clad guru may not look the part. But like the DNA strands he works with, he and others like him, could turn out to be critical pieces of building business on the Palouse.