The biologists in university who are in the third year, they make a program where they make fun of the teachers. That is an occasion in December when all of those who already graduated coming back, and listening, meeting, this kind of reunion. I was in my last year. I was 22 years old at that point, and there, I had seen a very handsome guy, and then he asked me to dance with him, because it was also disco after that, and then, I don't know that he was in high school. He was 17, and I was 22, which, five years younger. He was very funny, and so we were friends, and we went to the movie or something. Eventually, when he was 20 and I was 25, we married.

He finished high school. It was specialized in engineering. My mother on our wedding thought not more than one year to this marriage. October 11, it will be 43 years anniversary. This is how I met my husband. I was always not the convention. Many action was against what other people question my judgment. I said, "Okay," my mother first argument was, "Okay, you are 25, he's 20. You are fine now. When you will be 45 and he is 40, you know, 45-years-old woman is an old woman, 40-years-old man is a young one." So, I told my mom, "Okay, when I am 45, we will divorce." [laughter]

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.