A Sun Staff Report

MALDEN — Three Lowell entities are among 36 in the state nominated for The Immigrant Learning Center’s third annual Immigrant Entrepreneur Awards.

Nominees represent business leaders from throughout the state in four business categories: Neighborhood, Growth, Life Science and High-Tech.

Winners for each category will be announced at the Immigrant Entrepreneur Awards Dinner on Thursday, at the Royal Sonesta Hotel in Cambridge.

Lowell nominees include:

Neighborhood Business

* Denise and Sambath Ban, Simply Khmer Restaurant, 26 Lincoln St. (from Cambodia). This husband-and-wife team founded Simply Khmer in the city’s Lowell Highlands neighborhood in 2007. Simple Khmer has been featured on the national Food Network popular TV show “Bizarre Foods.” The restaurant has also been featured on Channel 5′s “Chronicle” and picked as the “Top 20 Essential Asian Restaurants in the Boston Area” by Boston Magazine.

The Bans recently partnered with the city’s Economic Development Office by helping to produce a promotional video highlighting the city as a place to live, work and play. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEUeKafQrR0.

* Roger Samkhon Pin and Soben Pin, KhmerPost USA, 45 Merrimack St., Suite 218A (from Cambodia). KhmerPost USA is a free Khmer-English biweekly newspaper that serves Lowell, Boston, Providence, New Jersey and Philadelphia founded by husband-and-wife Roger Samkhon Pin and Soben Pin in 2008 in Philadelphia. In 2013, they moved its headquarters to downtown Lowell because Lowell has the second-highest population of Cambodian-Americans in the U.S. (trailing only Long Beach, Calif.).

In addition to reporting news, KhmerPost helps Cambodian-Americans integrate into their new communities. It holds an event “KhmerPost USA Press Club” four times a year in Lowell to foster discussion among community members and leaders about issues of the day.

High-Technology

* Fausia Khan and Mansoor Khan, Alere Analytics, 900 Chelmsford St., Tower 3 (from Pakistan). Husband-and-wife Mansoor and Fausia Khan founded Alere Analytics (formerly DiagnosisONE) in 2003, and in 2012 it was purchased by Alere Inc. Masoor Khan serves as chief executive officer, with Fausia Khan the chief medical officer of this medical-informatics company.

Alere Analytics provides the health-care industry with the world’s largest library of evidence-based medical knowledge, featuring more than 30,000 clinical rules, that seamlessly integrates into existing hospital and laboratory information systems.

The Malden-based Immigrant Learning Center is a nonprofit that helps immigrants and refugees become successful workers, parents and community members through direct-service programs and public education. It provides free, year-round English classes to immigrant and refugee adults in Greater Boston.

The master of ceremonies for the dinner will be Richard Davey, secretary and CEO of the Massachusetts Department of Transportation and Immigrant Learning Center Inc. board trustee.

Ticket and sponsorship information is available at http://www.ilctr.org/events.