Andres Merits was born in Pärnu, resort town located in South-West of Estonia. He received his PhD degree at 1994 in Moscow University, Russia. At the beginning of his research carrier his studies were focused on plant viruses from different familes; during his post-doctoral studies in University of Helsinki, Finland, his research focus shifted to the studies of molecular biology of alphaviruses. At 2003 he received International Senior Research Fellowship from The Wellcome Trust and established his research group in University of Tartu that, prior this time, had no research team working on molecular biology of positive-strand RNA viruses. Since then, the molecular biology of alphaviruses has been a central topic for his studies as well as these of his research group; the list of viruses of interest has, however, rapidly expand from model viruses to human pathogens such as Chikungunya virus, Ross River virus and o’nyong’nyong virus. By rather obvious reasons his research interests expanded at 2016 to include flaviviruses (Zika virus and other) and again 2020 to include SARS-CoV-2. Handling this variety of viruses and topics by a single research group is challenging. As our team is the only one in Estonia working of molecular biology of these viruses collaboration with research teams all around the world has been established. Consequently, large majority of publications of the research group include authors from different countries.

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Andres Merits is an expert of genetic manipulation of viruses, application of synthetic biology for studies of viruses and development of virus-based test-, screening- and biotechnology systems. He does participate in wet-lab work performing molecular cloning. Still, most of his duties are related to supervision, writing and teaching. Before 2019 he was responsible for most of teaching of basic and molecular virology in Estonia; this changed due to his additional obligations during COVID-19 period. Now he is involved in teaching of applied synthetic biology and principles of drug development in Institute of Technology. The additional obligation mentioned above was serving as member of Advisory committee for Estonian Government (2020-2021). The experience is difficult to summarize in short form by few keywords including challenging, frustrating, educational, 24/7 and disappointing can more or less describe this period of time.