Uğur Şahin

Uğur Şahin (; born 19 September 1965) is a German medical researcher, entrepreneur, and businessman. He is the co-founder and CEO of BioNTech, which developed the world’s first mRNA-based vaccine against COVID-19.He also serves as chairman of the scientific management board of the (HI-TRON), a Mainz-based cutting-edge biopharmaceutical research laboratory he co-founded in 2018. He is co-inventor of more than 500 filed patents applications and patents. His main fields of research are cancer research and immunology.

Şahin's family, originally from Turkey, moved to Germany when he was four years old. He grew up in Cologne and studied medicine at the University of Cologne, completing a doctoral thesis there in cancer immunotherapy. He initially remained in academia, in patient care as an oncohematology physician and conducting research at university hospitals in Saarland and Zürich. He founded a research group at the University of Mainz in 2000 and became a professor of experimental oncology in 2006.

In 2001, while maintaining his position at the University of Mainz, Şahin began to engage in entrepreneurial activities, co-founding two pharmaceutical companies, in 2001 and 2008, with his partner and spouse Özlem Türeci. The second of these companies, BioNTech, together with Pfizer Inc, developed one of the major vaccines used to fight the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. As a result of the company's increase in value, Şahin and Türeci became the first Germans with Turkish roots among Germany's 100 wealthiest people. Provided by Wikipedia