Professor Katalin Kariko MAE receives 2021 Princess of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research#
The Princess of Asturias Foundation
has recognised Professor Kariko for her contribution to the development of COVID-19 vaccines.
Katalin Kariko, member of the Biochemistry and Molecular biology section of Academia Europaea, received the award in Oviedo, Spain, on Friday 22nd October, with the Spanish royal family in attendance. She was one of seven Laureates in the ‘Technical and Scientific Research’ category for 2021 recognised for contributing to the development of some of the COVID-19 vaccines approved to date.
Hungarian biochemist Professor Katalin Kariko is Senior Vice President, BioNTech RNA Pharmaceuticals and Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Her fields of scholarship include the therapeutic use of mRNA, mRNA-based antibody therapeutics, mRNA-based protein replacement therapy and mRNA vaccines. Professor Kariko’s research, together with immunologist Drew Weissman, led to the development of the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines. Together, they have received several awards for their revolutionary research, including the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award. Professor Kariko was elected to the Academia Europaea in 2020.
Professor Kariko arrived in Oviedo on 17th October to an overwhelming reception. At Academia Europaea’s Class C Life Sciences meeting, held online on 18th October, she expressed how she’d been moved by the warm welcome:
Professor Kariko was the keynote speaker at Academia Europaea’s Class C Life Sciences meeting, hosted this year by the Cardiff Knowledge Hub
. Members attending the meeting expressed how much they enjoyed her talk and were delighted to have the opportunity to ask her questions about her work.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="es" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/kkariko?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@KKariko</a>, Premio Princesa de Asturias de Investigación Científica y Técnica 2021,a su llegada a Oviedo.<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/PremiosPrincesadeAsturias?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#PremiosPrincesadeAsturias</a> <a href="https://t.co/F1qBz0KUGB">pic.twitter.com/F1qBz0KUGB</a></p>— Fundación Princesa de Asturias (@fpa) <a href="https://twitter.com/fpa/status/1449777583437066246?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 17, 2021</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
About the Princess of Asturias Awards#
The highly prestigious Princess of Asturias Awards were introduced in 1981 by the Princess of Asturias Foundation. There are 8 categories of awards:
- Arts
- Social Sciences
- Literature
- Technical and Scientific Research
- Communication and Humanities
- Sports
- International cooperation
- Concord
