About Us

innoVEK, LLC was founded by pre-eminent experts in technology transfer and university-industry partnerships who have worked with many universities, startups and established companies, and governmental agencies all over the world, helping them build robust technology commercialization infrastructure, create effective partnerships and alliances, identify and pursue funding, and, ultimately, move innovative ideas from minds to the marketplace. 

Principals

Eugene Krentsel, Ph.D.

Dr. Eugene Krentsel is a Founder and CEO of innoVEK, LLC.

He currently serves as Chief Scientific Officer and Vice President for Strategic Partnerships and Alliances at XLerateHealth, a healthcare focused early stage startup accelerator.  

From 2013 to 2018 he was Associate Vice President for Research and Innovation at the University of Louisville, responsible for the full range of activities in the discovery-innovation-translation-commercialization spectrum at the University.

Prior to that, Eugene served as Assistant Vice President for Entrepreneurship and Innovation Partnerships at the State University of New York at Binghamton, leading efforts in Entrepreneurship, Intellectual Property Management and Licensing, and Innovation-Based Economic Development. He led the development of the largest of the regional “Technology Transfer Hubs” across the SUNY research enterprise as part of a novel effort to spur new high-tech business opportunities and stimulate economic growth across New York State.

Prior to joining SUNY in 2005, he was founding Director of the International Technology Commercialization Institute at the University of Missouri in Columbia. Formerly a scientist, inventor and an entrepreneur, he has extensive experience in technology commercialization, as well as in development and management of hi-tech start-up businesses.

From 2012 through 2019 Eugene served as a member of SBIR/STTR Advisory Committee at the National Science Foundation.

Over the last 20+ years, Dr. Krentsel has advised various US and international organizations (National Academy of Sciences, US Department of State, National Science Foundation, World Bank, International Science and Technology Center, Science and Technology Center in Ukraine, Civilian Research and Development Foundation, American Councils for International Education, etc.) and led projects in Spain, Chile, Russia, Ukraine, South Africa, Poland, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Georgia, Azerbaijan and others, as well as published and presented on various aspects of technology commercialization.

He provided training to various international groups on building entrepreneurial ecosystems, working with industry, intellectual property strategies, assessing technology market potential, developing “Go-to-Market” strategies, identifying strategic partnerships and funding sources, negotiating techniques, and other aspects of innovation, as well as starting, growing, and managing technology-based companies. 

His efforts have helped establish and/or significantly enhance a number of technology transfer offices at major universities and research institutions in Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Chile.

Alexander Krentsel, M.Sc. (EECS)

Alexander Krentsel is a Co-Founder and Head of Engineering at innoVEK, LLC.

Alexander Krentsel currently works at Google Research as a Senior Systems Research Engineer in the Systems Research Group, and as a Graduate Student Researcher at UC Berkeley. He received a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from UC Berkeley, supported in his graduate studies by a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship.
 
Alexander’s research interests and publications span large scale computation and communication infrastructure, including architecting wide-area network control systems, formal methods for reasoning rigorously about network correctness and performance, network-assisted control systems for autonomous vehicles, and infrastructure for autonomous vehicle compound AI systems. His research papers have appeared at top systems conferences including SIGCOMM, HotNets, and others. 
 
Prior to joining the Systems Research Group, Alexander worked in consumer technology as a Product Software Engineer on the Growth team at YouTube in San Bruno, CA building product features and infrastructure. He also spent time working on the Google Ads, YouTube Creator Studio, and Meta’s ad data infrastructure teams. 
 
In addition to his engineering work, he has extensive experience in education, having taught courses in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Data Structures & Algorithms, Electrical Engineering, and Internet Architecture at Howard University, UC Berkeley,  Stanford, as well as lecturing introductory computer science in Ethiopia.