Dr Uğur Şahin is an immunologist who co-founded BioNTech, the company which developed one of the major vaccines against Covid-19. His family emigrated to Germany from Türkiye, where he studied medicine at the University of Cologne. He has worked as a professor and lecturer at various university hospitals across Germany. In 2008 Şahin founded BioNTech with his wife, Özlem Türeci and mentor, Christoph Huber. The main focus of his research work is the discovery of mRNA-based drugs for use as individualized cancer immunotherapies, but with the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic, BioNTech pivoted to using mRNA-based drugs towards fighting this new threat. By the end of 2020, BioNTech developed the BNT162b2 vaccine and reported a 95% efficacy against the Covid-19 disease and became the first mRNA drug approved for human use. Subsequently, Şahin entered a partnership with Pfizer pharmaceutical company to distribute it worldwide.