Introducing Brian S. Stengel: Driving Successful Enterprise Relationships at LabArchives

LabArchives is proud to welcome Brian Stengel to the Enterprise Success Team, where he steps into the role of Senior Enterprise Success Manager. Brian brings with him a powerful combination of leadership, technical expertise, and a deep passion for supporting researchers, faculty, and students. With over 30 years of experience in business and IT infrastructure, his expertise spans enterprise applications, network engineering, research computing, ERP systems, cloud operations, and IT service management (ITSM). Brian joins LabArchives with a mission aligned perfectly to ours: empowering teams to work smarter, collaborate more effectively, and accelerate the pace of discovery. He is dedicated to building strong customer relationships and driving meaningful engagement.

The Enterprise Success Equation

Today, as a Senior Enterprise Success Manager with LabArchives, Brian’s focus is the culmination of everything he has learned about IT balance, research infrastructure, and service delivery. His approach centers on the core principle that technology should work for people, not the other way around.

Brian's priority is deeply understanding what outcomes are important to our enterprise customers. He focuses on the core business problems or new opportunities they are striving to resolve.

His role involves:

• Helping institutions maximize value from LabArchives products.
• Strengthening research and education workflows.
• Partnering with campus leadership to align LabArchives solutions with institutional goals.
• Empowering faculty, research teams, and IT units through thoughtful engagement.
• Supporting successful onboarding, adoption, and long-term growth.

By helping customers achieve their desired outcomes, Brian and the enterprise success team aim to empower them to become LabArchives advocates, driving successful long-term partnerships.

Brian knows firsthand the challenges our customers face. His experience and leadership will strengthen our ability to deliver meaningful, long-term success.

- Linda Cubias, MLIS, Director of Enterprise Success

A Foundation Built at the University of Pittsburgh

Brian’s significant experience supporting academic research makes him uniquely suited for this role. His time as IT Service/Product Owner at the University of Pittsburgh laid the perfect foundation for his role at LabArchives. In this role, he managed a dedicated portfolio of research-accelerating services focused on improving research productivity, capacity, and capabilities in research data management across campus.

This portfolio included Electronic Lab Notebooks (LabArchives), alongside Research & Education Data Transfer (Globus), and the Faculty Information System (Symplectic Elements).

While at Pitt, Brian:

• Gained direct insight into the specific outcomes that matter most to key stakeholders, including Principal Investigators (PIs), lab managers, and research administration staff.
• Served as a PI himself on federally funded grants, which provided a firsthand education in the intricate processes of grants and grants management.
• Engaged directly with faculty and laboratory teams to assess their needs and develop infrastructure, workflow, and data-management solutions.
• Spearheaded the implementation of IT service management practices, employing ITIL methodologies to steer service delivery and support endeavors.

This work gave Brian a unique perspective on how LabArchives fits into the broader research ecosystem. His hands-on experience supporting LabArchives from the university side now informs his vendor-side approach, allowing him to empathize with customer challenges and deliver high-impact solutions.

Brian’s deep understanding of research workflows and enterprise IT  makes him a tremendous asset to our customers and our mission. We’re thrilled to welcome him to LabArchives.

- Kiptyn Locke, President 

Bringing Deep Expertise Across Research and IT Infrastructure

Brian’s career provides a holistic understanding that allows him to bridge conversations across IT, research, administration, and academic units.

Enterprise Leadership and IT Service Delivery

Early in his career, Brian mastered the essential principles of "demand management" at a large bank. This involved the rigorous exercise of balancing the supply of IT services with the business’s demands. This experience required balancing competing priorities like ensuring high availability and service level delivery while managing costs, maximizing customer satisfaction, and achieving clear business outcomes. This foundational experience established his habit of driving measurable results, a focus honed while managing early transitions to cloud offerings.

Research Capacity and Cyberinfrastructure

Brian led the comprehensive build-out and implementation of PennREN (now KeystoneREN) as Director of Operations for KINBER. This was a 1300-mile fiber optic network linking higher education institutions and service providers across the state of Pennsylvania. This infrastructure work highlighted the accelerating demand for advanced research data management tools and disciplines within higher education, recognizing the network as a fundamental catalyst for cutting-edge research.

He also served as an Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Research and Education Facilitator (ACI-REF). As Principal Investigator, he led two NSF Cyberinfrastructure Grants (CC-DNI, CC-CICI), driving impactful initiatives. These initiatives included the implementation of the ScienceDMZ, the deployment of Globus data transfer nodes, and the facilitation of 100G upgrades to national R&E networks. Brian also co-authored and published the paper, "The Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Research and Education Facilitators Virtual Residency".

Brian’s dedication to customer success, combined with his extensive background in both academic research infrastructure and enterprise IT service delivery, makes him an exceptional addition to the LabArchives team. We are thrilled to have Brian Stengel joining our mission!