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Kizzmekia Corbett, PhD, is a research fellow at the National Institutes of Health, where she and her team are leading first-stage clinical trials of a vaccine to fight against COVID-19. She earned her PhD in microbiology and immunology at the UNC School of Medicine in 2014.


Kizzmekia Corbett, PhD, is a research fellow at the National Institutes of Health, where she and her team are leading first-stage clinical trials of a vaccine to fight against COVID-19. She earned her PhD in microbiology and immunology at the UNC School of Medicine in 2014.

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Kizzmekia Corbett, PhD

April 14, 2020

As reported by NBC News: “The day President Donald Trump went to the National Institutes of Health for an update on progress toward a vaccine for COVID-19, many of those who sat behind the presidential seal with him were white men well known in the worlds of science, medicine and, now, national anxiety control: vaccine and infectious disease specialists like Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. John Mascola, Dr. Barney Graham and the man who led the human genome project, Dr. Francis Collins, director of the NIH. Sitting next to Graham was Kizzmekia Corbett, an NIH research fellow.”

Corbett earned her PhD from the UNC School of Medicine in 2014 and then moved onto the NIH, where she is leading a clinical trial for a COVID-19 vaccine at the NIH. You can read the full story about her and her team’s work at NBC News online and at People magazine. She was also a featured guest on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360.

The UNC School of Medicine featured her during her time in the microbiology and immunology lab of Aravinda de Silva, MPH, PhD.