Metin Colpan

Metin Colpan is a German entrepreneur and engineer. In 1986 a process he developed revolutionized biotechnology .

Career

Colpan (originally Çolpan) is of Tatar descent of Turkish nationality. In the 1970s, he came to Germany with his parents at the age of six.

After studying at the Technical University of Darmstadt , Colpan obtained his doctorate there in 1983 on the subject of the development and optimization of a separation process for high-molecular nucleic acids using high pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC) . He later worked as a research assistant at the Institute for Biophysics at Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf .

In 1984 he was a co-founder of Qiagen in Hilden near Düsseldorf , of which he is still a member of the supervisory board today.

In 1986 the engineer revolutionized biotechnology with a process he had developed . It reduced the time it took to purify plasmids , small, circular DNA molecules from a bacterial cell, to two hours. For the first time, extremely pure DNA could be obtained without great expense and without the use of toxic chemicals. This innovation is still considered the recipe for success for Qiagen today.

In 1998, after Kemal Şahin , Colpan was the second entrepreneur from Turkey to be voted German " Entrepreneur of the Year ".

In 1998 Colpan founded GenPat77 .

In 2004 Colpan resigned as CEO of Qiagen and moved to the supervisory board . He was succeeded as CEO by Peer Schatz. As of February 1, 2007, Metin Colpan still held 4.3% of the capital of Qiagen.

From 2005 to 2007 the long-standing executive board of the company he founded sat on the supervisory board of GenPat77.

Colpan is also a member of the boards of directors of Morphosys and GPC Biotech . In 2006 he left the Supervisory Board of Ingenium Pharmaceuticals.

swell

• AiD - Integration in Germany; Issue 4, 2006
• "manager magazin" 1/2002
• "Entrepreneur of the Year"