Ralf Wagner, University Regensburg
Ralf Wagner, professor at the university in Regensburg and expert on vaccine research will talk about his experience of founding the company GeneArt.
Ralf Wagner obtained his PhD degree in biology from the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich. Now he is a professor for medical microbiology at the University of Regensburg. His research is dedicated to several aspects of vaccine research, preclinical and clinical development with a major emphasis on HIV. Ralf Wagner was amongst the first scientists to recognize the value of gene design and synthesis for different areas of biotechnology such as metabolic engineering, vaccine design or the development of novel antibiotics thus consequently translating basic research tools into scalable technologies and a quickly emerging business in the field of Synthetic Biology. Thus, he was founder (1999), CEO and Chief Scientific Officer (2000 – 2012) of GeneArt AG, a previously public (Deutsche Börse Frankfurt) biotech company and now part of Thermo Fisher Inc. After the acquisition of a majority share by Life Technologies Inc., he successfully coordinated as GeneArt’s Site Leader and CEO the integration process and served within the US Corporation as Vice President Synthetic Biology. From Jan 2013 – April 2014 he supported Lophius GmbH, also a spin off from the Institute of Medical Microbiology (Regensburg), as interim CEO driving the development and marketing of novel T cell based diagnostics and research tools. Since Mai 2014, he is chairing Lophius’s supervisory board. Besides this he is supervisory board member of Sirion Biotechnology AG in Martinsried Munich and business coach of several founding initiatives.