Eric Hartman
Senior Associate Director, Ecosystem
Eric is the Senior Associate Director, Commercialization for the Office of Technology Commercialization (OTC) at the University of Kentucky, where he is focused on working with university innovators, startups, and entrepreneurs from across Kentucky in the areas of ideation, lean startup principles, deep-tech commercialization, corporate engagement, strategic planning, startup formation, and early-stage dilutive and non-dilutive funding. His team includes the UK OTC Commercialization group, Launch Blue, and Launch Blue Ventures.
Before joining the University of Kentucky, Eric served as program director for the Kentucky SBIR/STTR Matching Funds Program at Kentucky Science and Technology Corporation. He was previously co-founder and president of customKYnetics, Inc., a medical device startup company developing novel rehabilitation technologies for the physical therapy market. Eric served as principal investigator on 22 grants awarded to customKYnetics from the National Institutes of Health and the Commonwealth of Kentucky totaling nearly $9 million. He was the lead inventor on six issued U.S. patents, led multidisciplinary engineering/research and development teams, and secured partnerships with leading research universities for clinical research. Eric received a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering and a Master of Science in biomedical engineering, both from the University of Kentucky.