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“It is always a great privilege to welcome a researcher of international acclaim at our Academy. These days, Katalin Karikó is one of the leading personalities of international scientific life, who has to honour countless invitations besides her work – she has been awarded an honorary degree by Harvard University only a little while ago –, but whenever she visits our Academy or the Biological Research Centre of Szeged, it is a homecoming for her”, said Tamás Freund, President of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in his welcome address. He reminded that two years before, in her keynote speech delivered at the 194th General Assembly of MTA, Prof. Karikó evoked the defining moments of her career from her early lab years to her being propelled to the forefront of the scientific world.
“This time Katalin Karikó is going to talk about what motivates researchers the most, what sort of goals should be set, and how scientists can keep their fervour for science even when their journey is punctuated by failure. Her latter message may be especially motivating for those young researchers who find at the beginning of their career that there are more unexpected hurdles and fewer spectacular results along the way than what they imagined”, said Tamás Freund.
To read the full text of Tamás Freund’s welcome address (in Hungarian), please click here.
In her lecture, Katalin Karikó used her own example to talk about how to process hundreds of experimental results, and how to navigate smartly in scholarly literature. She also talked about the importance of scientific cooperations and presented the advantages and drawbacks of scientific (academic/university) and industrial workplaces. Citing her own life experience, she gave an excellent demonstration of how to preserve our enthusiasm for science, while also letting her audience in on her method of introducing order into articles read and systematizing experimental results.
After the lecture, Katalin Karikó was delighted to give detailed answers to numerous questions from an audience of several hundred participants.
The event was chaired by Gábor Kecskés, co-chair of the Hungarian Young Academy. The Q&A session was moderated by Imola Wilhelm, the other co-chair of the Hungarian Young Academy.