Meet The Team

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Who We Are

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DJ Nag, Ph.D., MBA

Dr. DJ Nag is the president of Innovaito LLC, an intellectual property strategy think tank. He also launched Brevelex Inc. and, as the chairman of the company, focused on efficient IP protection. Currently, he serves as an independent board member and chair of the governance committee at Crown Electrokinetics Inc (NASDAQ: CRKN), an energy-saving technology company.

DJ was the Chief Investment Officer and head of intellectual property and partnership at Ventech Solutions Inc., a healthcare technology company that manages quality data for the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).  He has successfully led Ohio State University, Rutgers University, and University of Nebraska’s technology transfer offices that included licensing, start-up, and investments. As an entrepreneur he has led a number of start-ups in the intellectual property strategy, artificial intelligence, and medical device space. As a consultant in patent monetization and intellectual property strategy he has worked with many Fortune 500 companies, universities, and national governments. He was a director at Ocean Tomo and a vice president at ICAP Ocean Tomo, leading patent transaction markets. He was recognized as one of the top global IP strategists by IAM300 in 2019. DJ was on the board of AUTM from 2012–14 and focused on educating the members around the world on the importance of technology transfer and intellectual property. He is widely recognized as a global intellectual property strategist, working with government and universities in countries like Poland, Japan, India, Turkey, Brazil, South Korea, and Ukraine. 

He volunteers as the chair of the Ohio IP Alliance, the executive-in-residence at the Dublin City Schools leading a start-up academy for high school students, and has served on the foundation board at the Dublin Methodist Hospital. 

DJ is very passionate about teaching and currently holds a number of professor positions at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, where he is a Professor of Practice Business and Science – Professional Sciences Masters (2011– present), and every summer teaches Fundamentals of Intellectual Property in the Masters in Business and Science Graduate Program. At Shizuoka University, Hamamatsu, Japan (2011 – present) he has been a Visiting Professor. Recently, he was also invited to join as lecturer at Amrita University, Coimbatore, India (2020 – present), one of the largest private universities in India, and at the ITQB NOVA, Oeiras, Portugal. 

He holds a PhD in biophysical chemistry, MS in chemistry and computer sciences, and MBA from University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He was summa cum laude in Bachelors in pharmaceutical engineering from Jadavpur University (top 10 in India) and received the M.L. Khorana Gold medal for placing first in India in pharmaceutical sciences (1992).

Brian Cummings

Brian Cummings is a Partner at Innovaito and the CEO of Brevelex. Brian has had a successful career in starting hundreds of technology based companies and is passionate about changing the way in which breakthrough technologies get commercialized. He is a Founder and/or CXO of a number breakthrough companies including Mu Therapeutics – developing a novel vaccines for addiction, Technium – a SAAS company that analyzes and aggregates Big Ideas, Tao – a medical device merchant bank, and Motive – an accelerator based on NISI principles. Brian has generated over $100 million in licensing and ventures revenue and was most recently Vice President of Technology Commercialization at Ohio State University and President of the Ohio State Innovation Foundation. In that role he transformed the office led the creation of over 20 new entrepreneurial based programs, tripled the number of start-ups, doubled the number of inventions and increased the portfolio valuation over 30 fold. Previously he was Executive Director of the Technology Commercialization Office at the University of Utah and Associate Vice President for Technology Ventures. Brian has set up multiple seed and venture capital funds and with his partner, Paul Ahlstrom, developed a unique seed funding model called KickStart to align early stage investors. Previously, Brian led the life science commercialization efforts at the University of Texas and structured one of their largest deals to date. Brian has served on multiple Boards including e-SENS Inc., Tao Ventures, Catheter Connections, The Rocky Mountain Research Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases, The Governor’s Board for Business Resource Centers, The Kickstart Seed Fund, The Renaissance Foundation, The Edison Institute, SciTech the LES Board for Technology Commercialization Structure and Development and Alta Innovation Institute

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