The European Patent Office honored Karikó with the European Inventor Award 2022 in the Lifetime Achievement category.
On June 21, 2022, the European Patent Office presented Katalin Karikó with the European Inventor Award 2022 in the prestigious Lifetime Achievement category, one of Europe's most significant honors for inventors.
The award recognized Karikó's decades of pioneering work on modified mRNA, a body of research spanning from her early academic career in Hungary through her tenure at the University of Pennsylvania and later BioNTech, culminating in technology foundational to COVID-19 vaccines that saved millions of lives worldwide.
Selected from a pool of international nominees, Karikó's Lifetime Achievement recognition specifically honored the sustained, multi-decade arc of her invention career, rather than any single patent, underscoring the cumulative and enduring significance of her scientific contributions.
Presented at a ceremony celebrating European innovation more broadly, this award further elevated Karikó's public profile just over a year before she would receive the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, and it highlighted the European Patent Office's recognition of her substantial patent portfolio across multiple European jurisdictions accumulated over the preceding decade.