Nobel winner whose work led to COVID-19 vaccines inspired her daughter to Olympic victory

Olympic gold medallist Susan Francia is coming to terms with the fact that she's no longer the most famous person in her family.

That's because the retired U.S. rower's mother, Katalin Karikó, just won a Nobel Prize in Medicine. The biochemist was awarded alongside her colleague, vaccine researcher Drew Weissman, for their groundbreaking work that led to the development of COVID-19 vaccines. 

"Now I'm like, 'Shoot! All right, I've got to work harder,'" Francia said with a laugh during an interview with As It Happens host Nil Köksal. 

But in all seriousness, Francia says she's immensely proud of her mother's accomplishments. In fact, it was Karikó's fierce dedication to science that inspired Francia to win Olympic gold medals in 2009 and 2012.

"Sport is a lot like science in that, you know, you have a passion for something and you just go and you train, attain your goal, whether it be making this discovery that you truly believe in, or for me, it was trying to be the best in the world," Francia said.

"It's a grind and, honestly, I love that grind. And my mother did too."

Karikó says she's as proud of her daughter as her daughter is of her.

"She was persistent and worked hard and she was not giving up," she said of Francia's rowing career. "Even when her [hand], you know, was full of blisters."

Karikó was senior vice-president and head of RNA protein replacement at BioNTech until 2022, and has since acted as adviser to the company. She is also a professor at the University of Szeged in Hungary and adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine.

She's been getting a lot of media attention since she won medicine's most prestigious prize.

But one of her favourite headlines so far comes from