Nobel Prize presented to Ferenc Krausz and Katalin Karikó

2023. december 12.

The most prestigious professional accolades, established by Alfred Nobel, were presented on 10 December 2023. This year, two researchers affiliated with BME were also awarded Nobel Prizes.

The 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L'Huillier, for experimental methods that generate attosecond pulses of light for the study of electron dynamics in matter.

Ferenc Krausz, who was born in Mór and now lives in Germany, together with his research team are currently investigating the medical diagnostic potential of short pulses of light, including the analysis of the molecular composition of human blood using ultra-short pulsed laser technology.

Ferenc Krausz and his colleagues have high hopes that molecular blood testing with infrared light may be able to detect the signs of serious diseases (e.g. cancerous lesions) at an early stage, when there are no worrying symptoms that would prompt the person to seek medical attention. This can be crucial, especially for diseases whose symptoms often appear only at an advanced stage. Sensitive detection of abnormalities in the molecular composition of blood could become a cornerstone of future preventive health care.

From the technical aspect, the researchers want to use artificial intelligence to discover which diseases doctors can deduce from the infrared molecular fingerprints generated during blood analyses.

Ferenc Krausz is one of the pioneers of Attosecond physics, and his research findings are used in many fields, including medicine and laser testing. The Hungarian researcher was born in Mór and holds a Master's degree in Electrical Engineering from BME’s Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Informatics and a Master's degree in Theoretical Physics from the Faculty of Natural Sciences of Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE TTK). He started his research at the BME Institute of Physics under József Bakos in the field of laser physics. He obtained a Ph. D. in quantum electronics at Vienna University of Technology in 1991. He received his “habilitation” degree in the same field in 1993. He took up a teaching post in Vienna in 1998 and was appointed professor in 1999. Advancing in his career, in 2003 he was appointed Director of the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany, and in 2004 he became professor at the Department of Experimental Physics at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.

In 2005, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by Budapest University of Technology and Economics on the recommendation of BME’s Faculty of Natural Sciences (BME TTK). He has received numerous awards, including the Wittgenstein Prize, the Leibniz Prize and the Wolf Prize.

Ferenc Krausz is a Hungarian and Austrian citizen, lives in Garching, Germany, with his wife Angela and children Anita and Martina.

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Katalin Karikó was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in Stockholm. In collaboration with Drew Weissman, the biochemist and research biologist, who was awarded BME’s John von Neumann Professorship and the Széchenyi Prize, developed and patented the therapeutic application of nucleoside-modified RNA that enabled the development of effective vaccines against COVID-19.

On 2 June 2023, prior to receiving the John von Neumann Professorship Katalin Karikó gave a lecture to an audience of 500 people in the Simonyi Károly Lecture Hall of the Q building of Budapest University of Technology and Economics, where she was received with a frenetic applause.

Katalin Karikó was born in 1955 in Szolnok, graduated in biology from the University of Szeged in 1978, where she also obtained her PhD degree. She worked as a postdoctoral fellow, first at the Nucleotide Chemistry Lab of the Biological Research Centre in Szeged until 1985, then at Temple University, Philadelphia and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda. In 1989, she joined the University of Pennsylvania, where she taught and conducted research until 2013, when she became Vice President of BioNTech RNA Pharmaceuticals. Since 2021, she has been a Research Professor at the University of Szeged and Adjunct Professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

On 7 December 2023 she gave her Nobel lecture entitled “Developing mRNA for therapy“ . In her presentation, in addition to the professional topics, she talked about the direction that technology has taken and her personal career, the foundations of which she laid during her studies in Hungary.

Katalin Karikó's work is a prime example of the practical application of biochemistry and modern biotechnology, and demonstrates the importance of these fields. Budapest University of Technology and Economics is also closely linked to these disciplines, offering high-quality bioengineering and biotechnology programmes, and is currently involved in a number of biochemistry and biotechnology research projects.

It was not the first double Nobel Prize for Hungary

At the 1994 Nobel Prize ceremony in Stockholm, two Hungarian researchers were awarded the prestigious prize for their lifetime achievements.

In 1994, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded "for his contribution to carbocation chemistry” to György Oláh, a Hungarian-born American professor of chemistry, BME’s former student, lecturer and head of department, after whom the doctoral school of BME’s Faculty of Chemical Technology and Biotechnology was named. His professional achievements include the development of the highly publicised direct methanol fuel cell, which also offers a solution to the global warming problem. After the 1956 revolution, he left Hungary with his family and emigrated to the United States, but on 19 September 2017 he was laid to rest in Budapest in the Fiumei Road Cemetery, in accordance with his will.

Also in 1994, the Nobel Prize was awarded to János Harsányi, a Hungarian-born professor of economics living abroad, who shared the prestigious award in economics with John Forbes Nash and Reinhard Selten “for their pioneering analysis of equilibria in the theory of non-cooperative games”.

János Harsányi was an expert and researcher of game theory, especially of non-cooperative information games, the so-called “Bayesian games”, and in his scientific work he analysed the application of this theory within economics. He has made significant contributions to the application of game theory and economic reasoning in political and moral philosophy (specifically to the ethics of utilitarianism), and he also had outstanding achievements in the field of equilibrium analysis.

Nobel Prize ceremony live

The Nobel Prize ceremony is held every year on 10 December, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death, at the Stockholm Concert Hall in Stockholm, Sweden.

Sunday's award ceremony will be streamed live on the official website of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

An entire Noble Week is dedicated to the award ceremony and the scientific topics between 6-12 December 2023. Details of the programme are available on the Nobel Prize website.

 

 

TZS

Photos: bme.hu, Peter Seidel

Source of featured picture: Nobel Prize Facebook page