Metspalu, Andres

Metspalu was born on March 11, 1951 in Lääne-Virumaa County . In 1969, he graduated from high school in the village of Rakke . In 1976 he graduated from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Tartu . In 1979, he received the title of Ph.D. in molecular biology at the Institute of Molecular Genetics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in Kiev . His work was devoted to the structure and functions of eukaryotic ribosomes ^[2] .

From 1976 to 1980, Metspalu worked as a junior researcher at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology at the University of Tartu. From 1981 to 1982, he was a member of IREX at Columbia University . He returned to the Laboratory of Molecular Biology as a junior research fellow, and from 1985 to 1992 he was the head of the gene isolation laboratory at the University of Tartu. From 1986 to 1992, he was the head of the research department of the Estonian Biocenter . During this period, he also attended the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics, Tampere and Gaburg Universities ^[2] .

In 1992, Metspalu was appointed to the Biotechnology Council of the University of Tartu and became the head of the genetic technology laboratory of the Estonian Biocenter. In 1993, he spent three months at the H. Pette Institute for Experimental Immunology at the University of Hamburg, and from 1993 to 1994 he was a visiting professor of molecular and human genetics with K. Thomas Kaski at the Baylor College School of Medicine. From 1996 to 1997, he again served as chairman of the Center for Molecular Diagnostics at the University of Tartu. In 1999, he became the founder and chairman of Asper Biotech in Tartu. During this period, he visited the International Agency for Research on Cancer (1999-2000) and became the founder and chief scientific inspector of EGeen International Inc. (Foster City, California, 2002-2004). Since 2007, he worked as director of the Estonian Genome Center at the University of Tartu ^[2] .