Honorary Degree Recipient

Katalin Karikó 
Doctor of Science

Katalin Karikó is an acclaimed Hungarian-American biochemist whose perseverance in the face of setbacks during the course of her 40-year career paved the way for the revolutionary Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines that helped stem the COVID-19 pandemic.

Together with former colleague Drew Weissman, Karikó conducted research on the modification of nucleic acids for RNA therapeutics, which led to the fast-track development of these vaccines. For this groundbreaking work, Karikó and Weissman were awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Karikó received many other honors for her research, including the 2021 Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award, the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, the Benjamin Franklin Medal, and being named to Time magazine's Heroes of the Year list in 2021. In 2023, she was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. 

Her discovery’s far-reaching implications for potential treatment of infectious diseases, autoimmune disorders, cancers and other debilitating conditions will impact countless more lives for decades to come. As an adjunct professor of neurosurgery at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Karikó continues to inspire the next generation of researchers. Her accomplishments illustrate the positive effect that science can play in the lives and health of the world's populations.

In appreciation for her lifesaving work, the State University of New York bestowde upon Karikó the degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa.

This degree is bestowed at the Doctoral Hooding Ceremony.