Detlev Riesner

Overview
Detlev H. Riesner is a German biophysicist, emeritus professor of Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf and a co-founder of QIAGEN. QIAGEN started in Düsseldorf in 1984 as a university spin-off built on nucleic-acid purification methods from his biophysics group, and in 1996 became the first German company to list on Nasdaq. Riesner sat on QIAGEN's Supervisory Board from 1996 and chaired it from 1999 to 2014. His scientific work centred on viroids and prions. On Startuprad.io he tells the story of building a German biotech company in the 1980s, when venture capital in Germany was scarce.

Why this entity matters
Detlev Riesner matters as a reference entity because QIAGEN is one of the earliest and most durable examples of a German university spin-off growing into a listed global company, and he was part of that path from the laboratory to the boardroom. The company's 1996 Nasdaq listing is still cited as a milestone for German biotech and for the question of where European science companies raise growth capital. His career also shows a model that many deep-tech founders in Germany, Austria and Switzerland now follow: a professor who stays in research while doctoral students lead the company, and who later takes on governance as chair of the supervisory board. For founders, technology-transfer offices and investors, his account of financing a biotech company in Germany before an active venture market existed is a primary-source view of how the German biotech sector began.

Career
Detlev Riesner studied physics in Hannover and completed his doctorate at the University of Braunschweig under Manfred Eigen, followed by postgraduate research at Princeton, according to a TU Dresden lecture biography. He lectured in biophysical chemistry at Hannover Medical School from 1975 to 1977 and was Professor of Biophysical Chemistry at the Technical University of Darmstadt. In 1980 he took the Chair of Biophysics at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, which he held until his retirement; the Falling Walls Foundation gives 2007 and TU Dresden gives 2006. At Düsseldorf he served as Dean of the Science Faculty and as Vice-President for Research, and he later joined the university's Board of Trustees. He held guest professorships at the Department of Neurology of the University of California, San Francisco, and, according to TU Dresden, at the Institute of Microbiology of Academia Sinica in Beijing. His research focused on infectious molecules, notably viroids, which are small RNA molecules, and prions, which are protein aggregates. Purifying viroid RNA for biophysical studies led to the technology behind QIAGEN. The company was established in Düsseldorf in 1984 as Diagen; BIO Deutschland and Wikipedia name his doctoral students Metin Colpan, Karsten Henco and Jürgen Schumacher as founders, with Riesner as their supervisor and supporter, while QIAGEN's 2013 announcement on its Supervisory Board calls him a co-founder. QIAGEN listed on Nasdaq in 1996 and on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in 1997. Riesner joined the Supervisory Board in 1996, became its Chairman in 1999, stood for re-election for the last time in 2013 and handed the chair to Werner Brandt in 2014. The Falling Walls Foundation lists further supervisory board roles at NewLab Bioquality, Direvo and Alantos, and AC Immune lists him as an honorary member of its Scientific Advisory Board.

Role in the startup and technology landscape of Germany, Austria and Switzerland
Detlev Riesner belongs to the first generation of German academic founders in biotechnology. QIAGEN is regularly described as one of the first biotech spin-offs from a German university, and it listed on Nasdaq in 1996, a year before its listing on the Frankfurt Neuer Markt. Today QIAGEN is domiciled in Venlo, the Netherlands, with its main operating base in Hilden near Düsseldorf. For founders and investors in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, his story links three recurring questions: how university research becomes a company, how scientific founders share roles with business leaders, and why some of the region's strongest life-science companies looked to US capital markets for growth.

Selected relationships and affiliations
Company co-founded: QIAGEN (established 1984 in Düsseldorf as Diagen; Supervisory Board member from 1996, Chairman 1999-2014). Co-founders named in public sources: Metin Colpan, Karsten Henco, Jürgen Schumacher. Successor as Supervisory Board Chairman: Werner Brandt (2014). University: Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (Chair of Biophysics; Dean; Vice-President for Research; Board of Trustees). Doctoral supervisor: Manfred Eigen. Other boards listed by public sources: NewLab Bioquality, Direvo, Alantos, AC Immune (Scientific Advisory Board). Startuprad.io connection: interview guest, conducted by host Jörn "Joe" Menninger, and named in the platform's twelfth-anniversary retrospective. Related catalogue entity: QIAGEN N.V. (slug qiagen-n.v.).

Startuprad.io relevance
Detlev Riesner is an interview guest of Startuprad.io. The interview, published on 13 March 2025 and split into two parts because the recording ran close to 80 minutes, follows QIAGEN from academic research in Düsseldorf to its Nasdaq listing and DAX membership. It covers early funding in a German market with little venture capital, regulatory hurdles, the transition from academia to entrepreneurship and the evolution of the German biotech sector. Startuprad.io's twelfth-anniversary retrospective, published on 31 October 2026, lists the episode with the Qiagen co-founder "on the road from a German university lab to Nasdaq" among the conversations that still stand out.

Detlev Riesner appears in the following Startuprad.io coverage.

Startuprad.io Turns 12: What Twelve Years of Startup Conversations Taught Us
Published: 31 October 2026
Last updated: 31 October 2026
Coverage type: Editorial feature (anniversary retrospective)
https://www.startuprad.io/post/startuprad-io-turns-12-what-twelve-years-of-startup-conversations-taught-us

From Lab to Nasdaq: The Qiagen Founder: Stories and Lessons in Biotech Entrepreneurship
Published: 13 March 2025
Last updated: 20 September 2026
Coverage type: Interview
https://www.startuprad.io/post/from-lab-to-nasdaq-the-qiagen-story-and-lessons-in-biotech-entrepreneurship

Public source context
This profile draws on the Falling Walls Foundation speaker profile https://falling-walls.com/foundation/people/detlev-riesner , the TU Dresden cfaed lecture biography and abstract https://cfaed.tu-dresden.de/cfaed-distinguished-lecture-series-70/viroids-and-prions , QIAGEN's 2013 Supervisory Board announcement as reported by Technology Networks https://www.technologynetworks.com/diagnostics/news/qiagen-proposes-changes-to-members-of-supervisory-board-206582 and BioSpectrum https://www.biospectrumasia.com/news/26/1982/qiagen-makes-changes-in-supervisory-board-.html , BIO Deutschland's company portrait of QIAGEN https://www.biodeutschland.org/en/qiagen-a-global-leader-in-molecular-diagnostics.html , AC Immune's advisory board page https://acimmune.com/pc-person/detlev-riesner , the publicly available Wikipedia record for QIAGEN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qiagen , and Startuprad.io's own coverage listed above.

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University spin-outs are where much of Germany's deep tech starts, and Entrepreneurs Vault members get our spin-out pipeline tracking and researcher-to-founder analysis built on cases like Detlev Riesner's QIAGEN story.
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Canonical record: https://www.startuprad.io/entities/detlev-riesner