When I was in high school, it happened one more thing with me. I read Hans Selye’s book about stress, about how to handle stress. I wouldn't talk to you here today if I would not read how to handle stress. At 16 I learned, and so, many things which a person would take personally or get upset, I did not get, I did not care. I always decided that, is it worse? No, not worse.

I was not a confrontational person, and it didn't bother me. So, many, many things they don't know, when people like Moderna was formed, and they said they discovered a modification, I said, "No, not really them, but who cares? Somebody's doing something," and then somehow, this attitude was, I did not crave recognition. I was happy that I know what I was doing, and I did not really wanted the other people to know. It was not important for me. That's how it is, and this Selye mantra, Selye, he coined the word in 1930s, stress.

Prior to that, it was physics. That you have to focus on things, what you can change. What I can say is that in these days that young scientists, I look at and see the other colleagues, classmates who's not working that hard, and they are advancing, and they are the favorite, they are promoted. Don't do that. Don't pay attention to that. You cannot change. You are already in the system. You think this is not fair, you are so much better position already.

You are in the system, and focus on what you can change, because you cannot change that, and that's what. I managed this because from early on I practice that. That's why if in these days I get an award, I always thanks to people who try to make my life miserable, because they made me to be stronger, work harder. Listen, I submitted so many grants. I focused on one topic, I was reading about, studying, and what I gained, the insight, and what experiment I would do, and what it would mean, and then reading again, what was the– I didn't get the grant. I never got an R01, but I learned so much, and get this insight. That's what counts.

Dr. Katalin Kariko is a biochemist and adjunct professor of neurosurgery at the University of Pennsylvania. She won the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her work in developing mRNA vaccines against COVID-19. She completed her schooling at the University of Szeged and carried out her post-doctoral work at the Institute of Biochemistry, Biological Research Centre of Hungary.

Dr. Kariko received her Bachelor of Sciences in Biology in 1978 and her PhD in Biochemistry in 1982 from the University of Szeged. She completed her post-doctoral work at the Institute of Biochemistry, Biological Research Centre of Hungary until 1985, when her lab at the Biological Research Centre lost funding. She then moved to the United States and carried out post-doctoral work at Temple University from 1981 to 1988 and at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences from 1988 to 1989. She then joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania in the Perelman School of Medicine’s neurosurgery department in 1989.

At the University of Pennsylvania, she began to collaborate with immunologist Drew Weissman, where the two experimented with modifying mRNA. In the early 2000’s, Kariko and Weissman discovered that swapping uridine with pseudouridine in mRNA created a molecule with favorable attributes such as reduced adverse reactions. This breakthrough led the way for many other modified mRNA molecules to be potentially used in a multitude of future medical applications, including developing effective mRNA vaccines against the COVID-19 virus during the height of the pandemic in 2020. For their development of mRNA biotechnology, Dr. Kariko and Dr. Weissman were awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Outside of the Nobel Prize, Dr. Kariko has received numerous awards for her contributions to science including the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award in 2021, the Novo Nordisk Prize in 2022, being inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2023, the Harvey Prize in Human Health in 2024, and elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2025.