Andres Metspalu - Biography#

Prof. Andres Metspalu, (MD 1976, PhD 1979) Head of the Estonian Biobank, Institute of Genomics, University of Tartu. He was a postdoc at Colombia (1981) and Yale University (1982), 1985 EMBL as a FEBS fellow and 1987 MPI West Berlin as EMBO fellow. His main scientific interests are human genetics, genomics of complex diseases and population-based biobanks and application of the genomics based personal medicine and prevention in health care. He has published and co-authored over 600 scientific papers (PubMed) and his H-index is 169 (Google Scholar). In 1985 A. Metspalu was at EMBL and 1987 at MPI Molecular Genetics (Abt. Wittmann). Further, he was a in 1993 -1994 at BCM, Houston, as a visiting faculty, in year 2000 at IARC, Lyon, France, as a recipient of the International VSS Award and in 2012 sabbatical at University of Lausanne working on human genetics and genomics. From 1996 to 2008 A. Metspalu was also the head and founder of the Mol. Diag. Center of the Tartu University Hospital. Metspalu is the past (2006) president of the European Society of the Human Genetics. 2010 he was elected to the Estonian Academy of Sciences. He is serving in several national and international committees (Board member of Mission for Cancer in Horizon Europe (until Dec.2021, EU 1+Million Genome, (member of the coordination group, Chair of the WG10 (common complex genomics) and co-chair of WG12 (Genome of Europe)), SAB member in EATRIS and EIT Health Stockholm) and has received among other awards and honors the Order of the Estonian Red Cross 3rd Class and L’Ordre des Palmes Academiques from the Republic of France. From 2010, he is Doctor Honoris Causa of Vilnius University. In 2017 The Baltic Assembly Prize for Literature, the Arts and Science and in 2020 Estonian State Prize for the outstanding and innovating discovery. He has supervised or co-supervised 30 successful PhD students, has been teaching biotechnology, human genetics, genome structure and function etc. subjects at University of Tartu from 1992 to 2024.