It has been announced that Prof. Dr. Uğur Şahin and his wife Dr. Özlem Türeci, the Co-Founder of the German biotechnology company BioNTech, which developed the new type of Coronavirus (Covid-19) vaccine, will be awarded an order of merit in Germany.

According to a statement from the German Presidential Office, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier will award Knight Commander's Cross of the Federal Order of Merit to Turkish scientists Özlem Türeci and Uğur Şahin at the ceremony, which will be held on 19 March at the Bellevue Palace and will be attended by Chancellor Angela Merkel.

It will be the first Order of Merit German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier awards to the researcher couple from BioNTech founders in person this year, and the medical researches by Özlem Türeci and Uğur Şahin will be underlined.

It is pointed out in the statement that Türeci and Şahin contributed to preventing the Covid-19 outbreak and it is said, “Thanks to their globally recognized competence in the field of M-RNA technologies and their relentless efforts, they managed to develop and approve a vaccine against Covid-19 in a very short time.”

Source: AA