You're Invited to Entrepreneurial Roller Coasters Talk by Samir Kaul on 4/28

As part of UMD's 30 Days of EnTERPreneurship, please join us for a very exciting talk!

“Entrepreneurial Roller Coasters” 

Speaker: Samir Kaul (M.S. ’97, biochemistry), founding general partner at Khosla Ventures

Tuesday, April 28, 2015 - 4:00pm

Physical Sciences Complex Lobby

Refreshments will be served

Please RSVP at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/SamirKaul.

Biography: Samir Kaul is a founding general partner at venture capital firm Khosla Ventures, where he focuses on sustainability investing including food and agriculture. After studying biology at the University of Michigan, he enrolled in University of Maryland's biochemistry grad program. At Maryland, Kaul heard Craig Venter speak about the genomics revolution. Venter's Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) had recently sequenced the first complete genome (a bacterium frequently associated with influenza infections) in record time using automated, state-of-the-art technology. Sensing a paradigm shift in the making, Samir joined TIGR to work on the genome of Arabidopsis thaliana, a member of the mustard family, which was a model organism for understanding agricultural staples such as rice, corn and wheat. Kaul went on to Harvard Business School to pursue an MBA, then joined Flagship Ventures to start and invest in early-stage biotechnology companies. In 2006 he became a founding general partner at Khosla Ventures focusing primarily on renewable energy, clean technologies and life science investing.