Eric Eisenhut

Eric Eisenhut is a Managing Director at KensaGroup, an Ithaca, New York–based firm founded in 2000 that specializes in commercializing advanced intellectual property from universities and corporate research labs into startup ventures using its proprietary "Academic-to-Industry" (A2I) process. He first joined KensaGroup as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence from 2002 to 2006, during which he served as President and Chief Executive Officer of MedHesives, a KensaGroup portfolio company that developed novel photopolymerizable resins used in coatings and adhesives technologies. He returned to KensaGroup as a Managing Director in July 2010 and has remained in that role since.

Eisenhut's career is rooted in the semiconductor and electronics industries. From 2007 to 2010 he was Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Kionix, Inc., an Ithaca-based semiconductor company that developed inertial sensors (MEMS accelerometers and gyroscopes) for consumer, industrial, and automotive markets; Kionix was acquired by Japan's ROHM Co., Ltd. in the fourth quarter of 2009. Earlier, from 1998 to 2002, he was Vice President of Sales for Atmel Corporation's Wireless and Microcontrollers Division. Before Atmel, he held sales management, business development, finance, and engineering positions at TEMIC Semiconductor and IBM Corporation.

Eisenhut earned his BSEE (Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering) from Manhattan College. His combination of engineering training and multi-decade commercial/sales leadership fits KensaGroup's model, in which experienced operators are paired with early-stage, deep-tech intellectual property to build and lead new companies. He has also been associated with Prendismo, LLC (a KensaGroup e-learning portfolio company), where he has served in a business-development capacity.

• Invests via venture creation: KensaGroup does not primarily write passive checks into existing startups — it identifies promising IP (having evaluated 3,000+ technologies since 2000), applies its A2I / Gateway IP development process, and forms new companies around it. Founders should understand the model is company-building, not late-stage growth capital.
• Chemistry-centric deep tech is the "scientific backbone" of the portfolio — spanning biotech, chemicals, materials, energy, medical devices, pharmaceuticals, agriculture, electronics, and automotive.
• University- and lab-sourced innovation, with a strong tie to Cornell University (co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer Dr. Bruce Ganem is a Cornell chemistry and entrepreneurship professor who has launched a dozen university-based startups).
• Very early stage — seed / formation stage, where the firm supplies operating leadership (entrepreneurs-in-residence like Eisenhut have stepped in as CEOs of portfolio companies).
• Emphasis on technologies with clear paths from academic research to commercial products (e.g., antifungal compounds, sustainable polymers, sterilization technology, advanced materials).