“Science is fun. To be a scientist, this is a fun job,” said medicine laureate Katalin Karikó. She likened it to being a detective or an investigator trying to solve a crime. “But the end of it, you don’t find a perpetrator, you find a solution, and maybe that solution will help somebody,” she said. Karikó’s pioneering research with her lab partner Drew Weissman was the foundation of the mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 and has paved the way for a host of treatments for cancer, HIV, malaria and other life-threatening diseases. They shared the 2023 medicine prize for their work.