🔒Engineer, business veteran Kirti Patel brings high-tech expertise to strengthen CT’s manufacturing sector

Kirti Patel says he has never taken a position knowing everything about it — and that’s part of what motivates him. Now, as Connecticut’s newly appointed chief manufacturing officer, Patel views the steepest part of his learning curve as government itself. Still, he says his new job offers the chance to make an “impact at scale.” “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to culminate all my collective experiences in the private sector and to apply it, while also learning about what it is to work in the public sector,” he said, speaking with the Hartford Business Journal just after his appointment was announced. A chemical and electrical engineer by training, Patel has spent his career in high-tech sectors — with chipmaker Intel, at a medical imaging startup spun out of Stanford, and later at major healthcare technology companies Siemens and Eppendorf. In a state that sometimes seems dominated by heavier manufacturing, making submarines and jet engines, it’s a background that Gov. Ned Lamont thinks is important. “​It’s, ​in ​many ​ways, where ​we’re ​headed ​in ​terms ​of ​advanced ​manufacturing ​in ​this ​state ​and ​in ​this ​country — ​where ​Connecticut’s ​got ​to ​stay ​a ​particular ​leader,” Lamont said as he introduced Patel to a crowd of some 600 manufacturing leaders in Hartford. The new manufacturing czar, he says, has worked at “places ​that ​require ​the ​most ​sophisticated manufacturing, ​the ​most ​sophisticated ​​engineering. ​He’s ​on ​the ​front ​lines ​there.” As Connecticut’s manufacturing chief, Patel is expected to help companies adopt new technologies such as automation and advanced robotics, strengthen supply chains and ensure small and midsized firms can access the capital and technical support they need to grow. He will also assist with aligning state workforce training programs with employers’ needs. That focus comes as manufacturers across the state report persistent struggles to find skilled labor — particularly machinists, technicians and maintenance workers — while also facing high energy and materials costs, tariffs, inflation and global supply chain disruptions.

Stepping up

Patel replaces Paul Lavoie, who left in July to become University of New Haven’s first vice president of innovation and applied technology. Lavoie took the job in February 2022, and had made the position into a high profile one, authoring a new manufacturing strategic plan for the state that debuted earlier this year, and leaning into challenges including automation, workforce development and cost reduction. Lavoie set a goal of raising the manufacturing sector’s contribution to state gross domestic product from 10% to 20%. There’s still a long way to go to reach that mark. As of the first quarter of 2025, manufacturing made up 11.65% of Connecticut’s $295.9 billion GDP, according to Bureau of Economic Analysis data. That’s up from 11.58% from the year-ago period. Meantime, the manufacturing sector employed 153,100 people at the end of July, down 1.7% from a year ago, according to state Department of Labor data. Overall, manufacturing employment has been on the decline since the start of 2024, with experts blaming labor shortages, an aging workforce and an increasing reliance on automation. The chief manufacturing role was first created by Lamont in 2019. The position sits inside the state Department of Economic and Community Development (DECD).

“Neither the governor nor I think that government is here to solve all the world’s problems,” said DECD Commissioner Daniel O’Keefe. “We truly want to approach all of this in a spirit of partnership.” But he has no illusions about the moment that Patel is stepping into. “We’re in a challenging environment right now,” O’Keefe said. “We’re seeing a lot of businesses defer investment because of all this rising protectionism and tariffs. That uncertainty has a real economic impact. We saw our economy, just like the rest of the United States, contract in Q1 after being on a really interesting acceleration path.” He’s also concerned about what the second quarter figures may show. And, as the federal government pulls back from investment in science and industry, he sees a role for the state to step up. “We think now is an environment when we should be investing,” O’Keefe said, pointing to the state’s long-running Manufacturing Assistance Act, which provides loans and grants to help companies expand and modernize, and the newer Strategic Supply Chain initiative, which focuses on strengthening Connecticut’s role in key industries by bolstering local suppliers and resilience. “This is hundreds of millions of dollars that we are investing on behalf of the taxpayers in the state of Connecticut to again foster our continued growth.”

CT ties

Patel served for 10 years as the president and board director of Eppendorf Manufacturing Corp. in Enfield, the operations arm of a German life sciences instrumentation maker, where he oversaw the company’s North American manufacturing operations. He stepped away from the role in 2023, and for the past two years has been advising technology startups through Yale Ventures and the University of Connecticut’s Technology Incubation Program. He moved to Connecticut in 2013 to join Eppendorf, settling in Simsbury, where he still lives. But the state was already familiar to him. His first job was with Intel, working in semiconductor lithography, which brought him to Intel’s supplier SVG-Lithography’s Wilton site He remained there for two years between 1996 and 1998, before heading to Stanford to help found Sensant Corp., a medical device startup developing 3D ultrasound imaging technology. After seven years of development, he and his co-founders began drawing interest from major industry players as the technology reached the pre-commercial stage. The company went on to be acquired by Siemens, and Patel stayed on to integrate the company into Siemens Healthcare’s ultrasound division based in California. After that, Siemens relocated him to Knoxville, Tennessee, as general manager at Siemens Molecular Imaging. Patel spent his early years in Zambia, the child of Indian immigrants. He returned to India for high school, and then earned a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from Mangalore University in India. He came to the U.S. first in the late 1980s for graduate studies at U.C. Davis, where he earned a master’s degree in chemical engineering. He would also go on to earn a master’s in electrical engineering at Stanford. He also holds an MBA from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. Patel and his wife have two children — a daughter in high school and a son who is a freshman in college.

‘Fairly specific’ needs

Patel said he became aware of the state’s search for a new chief manufacturing officer through John Bourdeaux, CEO at AdvanceCT, and was introduced to O’Keefe at DECD. He said he applied and went through a standard interview process to win the position. He sees the mix of experience that he has amassed over his career as critical to the role he’s about to undertake. “Connecticut has small companies, midsized companies, large companies. And in my role I look forward to working with all of them to listen to them and to understand what their needs are — and their needs are going to be fairly specific,” he said. He doesn’t yet have a firm prescription for where he’ll take his new position, setting himself a 90-day listening period before he builds on the work of his two predecessors. But he does bring an awareness of current challenges particularly around technology shifts, including artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, automation and robotics. “A lot of great work’s already been done,” he said. “The momentum is behind Connecticut. So, the question is, how do we continue building that momentum?”