Karikó and Weissman were honored with the Princess of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research in Oviedo, Spain.
On October 22, 2021, at a ceremony in Oviedo, Spain, Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman were presented with the 2021 Princess of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research, one of Spain's most prestigious international honors, awarded by the Princess of Asturias Foundation.
The award recognized their groundbreaking work on nucleoside-modified mRNA, technology that had, by late 2021, enabled the development and mass deployment of highly effective COVID-19 vaccines across the globe, playing a pivotal role in the international pandemic response.
The ceremony, presided over by Spain's royal family, placed Karikó alongside a distinguished list of past laureates spanning science, humanities, and the arts, marking a significant moment of international recognition for a scientist whose career had for decades unfolded largely outside public visibility.
This award further reinforced the growing global consensus around the historic importance of Karikó's contributions, coming amid a wave of international honors in 2021 that collectively elevated her public profile ahead of the ultimate recognition — the Nobel Prize — that would follow in 2023.