NetSAP February Dinner Circle

Peer Networking and Mentoring

Have you been searching for the opportunity to meet and get to know other South Asian professionals in the Boston area?

Are you the type that prefers small dinners with friends over raucous nights out at clubs? Do you want to know more about different career fields, and didn't know who to ask?

Well, then come participate in the Dinner Circle.
These small group dinners are designed to provide comfortable, intimate settings where young professionals with similar interests can have meaningful conversations and expand their social and professional relationships. In addition, they present an opportunity to meet experienced and successful professionals from the industry of your choice, who can guide you, and answer your questions.

• Vinit Nijhawan, Executive-in-Residence, Boston University; Venture Partner & Ex-CEO
     (Area: Business Development, Entrepreneurship, Start-ups)
  
• Jugnu Jain, Research Fellow II, Vertex Pharmaceuticals
     (Area:Pharma, Bio-technology, healthcare )
  

Where:	Bombay Club 57 JFK Street, Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA Directions: click here
When:	6:30pm - 9:00pm, Thursday, February 7th
Cost:	Members - $20 Non-Members - $25 Registration includes cost of dinner. Member prices are subsidized by NetSAP Sign up for 2008 NetSAP Membership
Registration:
Advance registration is closed. *NO Walkins*.
Contact:	Shobhit Chugh or Jigar Patel, Professional chairs at dcircle@netsapboston.org
February Dinner Circle Mentor Bios Vinit Nijhawan , Executive-in-Residence, Boston University; Venture Partner & Ex-CEO Vinit has over 20 years experience building four startups: as CEO of two, three were acquired, and the fourth has grown to over 400 people. Recently, Vinit was Venture Partner at Key Venture Partners and over two years sourced over 200 deals and made one investment. He is an advisor and board member to several technology startups and was a Mass High Tech All-Star in 2005. Vinit has participated in over 120 panel discussions and paper presentations, and is Chairman of TiE-Boston and a Board of Trustee of TiE Global, a non-profit that fosters entrepreneurship globally. Vinit is an Executive-in-Residence at Boston University where he teaches an MBA course on Starting New Ventures. Vinit earned a B.A.Sc in electrical engineering from the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. Jugnu Jain, Research Fellow II, Vertex Pharmaceuticals Jugnu currently works for Vertex Pharmaceuticals as a Research Fellow based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her current work involves researching several drugs discovery projects focused on inflammation, neuro-inflammation, immuno-suppression and cancer. She also handles various projects in other therapeutic areas including inflammation, diabetes, neurobiology. She has contributed to projects from early stage of target identification, validation and drug discovery to generation of SAR, profiling of lead compounds, POC in animal models, biomarker development, and preclinical toxicity testing, to IND filing and early clinical trials. She has published over papers in peer-reviewed journals including Nature and Science and represented Vertex in various conferences. She has been employed with Vertex since 1996. Prior to Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Jugnu was employed at Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School as a post-doctoral fellow and then as an Instructor. While at Dana Farber Cancer Center, she studied T cell activation and the transcriptional regulation of IL-2 and TNF promoters. She was the first to demonstrate that the transcriptional factor NFAT comprised of a nuclear component, Fos and Jun, and the cytosolic component NFATp. The discovery was published in 2 Nature papers and has paved the way for the cloning and characterization of NFAT, a major signaling factor determining the regulation of many cytokine genes. She was also named as an inventor on the patent on cloning of NFAT.