"Kizzmekia Corbett's work will have a substantial impact on ending the worst respiratory-disease pandemic in more than 100 years." Dr. Anthony Fauci
Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett, a widely recognized immunologist at only 35 years old, has been at the forefront of COVID-19 vaccine development as a leading scientist of the Vaccine Research Center’s coronavirus team at the National Institutes of Health. For the past six years, she has focused on coronavirus biology and vaccine development. During the pandemic, those years of research led her and her team to discover and develop the mRNA-1273, a leading COVID-19 vaccine, which was rapidly deployed to industry partner Moderna for Phase 1 clinical trials just 66 days after viral sequence release. The Moderna mRNA vaccine has been shown to be 94% effective in phase 3 trials and has been authorized for emergency use around the world to help end the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dr. Corbett earned her doctorate in microbiology and immunology from UNC’s School of Medicine in 2014. Her interest in rapid vaccine development led her to a postdoc fellowship at the NIH’s Vaccine Research Center, where she studied coronaviruses such as SARS and MERS. That work laid the foundation for the speed with which her team developed a COVID-19 vaccine.
