i am sassa

Katalin Karikó is a biochemist and a superhero, and she is saving our lives.

Katalin came to the US from Hungary with her family and little else to her name in 1985 for a University job. She hid the money she made selling their car on the black market inside her daughter’s teddy bear. Since the 1990’s, she has been passionately pursuing an understanding of how messenger RNA could potentially be used to fight disease, despite having been given every road block possible. She had a hell of a time getting funding for her research. She wrote a ton of grants, each of them denied due to the belief that her ideas were “far-fetched”. This went on for so long that she was actually demoted from her track to becoming a full professor, but she didn’t quit. She didn’t quit when she faces rampant sexism in her field. She also didn’t quit when she was diagnosed with cancer. This entire time, mind you, she was raising a daughter who would end up being an Olympic rowing medalist. She worked intensely long hours, sometimes sleeping at the lab. She was positive she was on to something.

Around 2005, Katalin started making some promising discoveries that other scientists couldn’t ignore. The excitement over her work literally inspired the birth of Moderna, one of the manufacturers of the COVID vaccine (Moderna’s name combines “modified” and “RNA”). Though she was poo-pooed and underestimated for over a decade, Katalin is now Senior Vice President at BioNTech and is in charge of mRNA protein replacement. When she first learned that the vaccines built on her research were found to be successful at preventing COVID, she celebrated in the nerdiest and most wholesome way possible; by eating an entire bag of chocolate-covered peanuts.

Thank you, Katalin Karikó.