A committee of experts in each area will review the nominations and select a winner in each of four categories: growth, neighborhood, high-tech and life science. Winners will be announced at the Barry M. Portnoy Immigrant Entrepreneur Awards Benefit on Tuesday, October 29, 2019, at the Royal Sonesta Boston in Cambridge, Mass. Everyone who agrees that immigrants are assets to Massachusetts is invited to attend. Ticket and sponsorship information is available at www.ilctr.org.

Venky Soundararajan’s passion is to harness the world’s scientific knowledge to improve the lives of patients. He founded nference in 2013 to do just that by using artificial intelligence to synthesize the world’s exponentially growing biomedical knowledge from the scientific, regulatory and commercial body of literature to enable a diverse set of applications ranging from R&D to commercial strategy and operations in the life sciences ecosystem. In 2017, Soundararajan founded his second company, Qrativ. A joint venture between nference and the Mayo Clinic, Qrativ was created to discover and develop treatments for unmet medical needs rapidly and efficiently. Along with his research partners at Harvard and MIT, he has made strides in advancing understanding of immunotherapy, ophthalmic and rare diseases, and viral evolution.

Ram Sasisekharan is the co-founder of a number of companies including Visterra Inc., a biotechnology company developing innovative, antibody-based therapies for the treatment of kidney and other hard-to-treat diseases; Momenta Pharmaceuticals, which is discovering and developing novel therapeutics for immune-mediated diseases with high unmet need; and Cerulean Pharma, a biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of novel, nanotechnology-based therapeutics in the areas of oncology, cardiovascular, autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. A professor of Biological Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 1996, Dr. Sasisekharan’s research focuses on the role complex sugars play in the immune system, human development and diseases such as cancer, zika, dengue and influenza. He serves on the steering committee of the Consortium for Functional Glycomics and is a member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. Dr. Sasisekharan has received numerous awards including the National Institutes of General Medical Sciences MERIT Award in 2010.

P.J. Anand is the founder of Alcyone Lifesciences, a company focused on novel treatments for chronic neuropathological conditions, a co-founder and executive chairman of Arthromeda, Inc., which is focused on orthopedic, patient-specific implant medicine, and founder of Anuncia, an Alcyone spin-out company working on hydrocephalus management. Dr. Anand is a recognized expert in translating academic research into clinical value propositions. With more than 25 years of experience in the life science industry, Anand serves as an advisor for numerous corporations and not-for-profit organizations including Claros Diagnostic, Spire Corporation and Neurowave Modulation Technologies.