Viral immunologist Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett is a research fellow and the scientific lead for the Coronavirus Vaccines & Immunopathogenesis Team at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Vaccine Research Center.

She stepped onto the national stage in 2020 when President Donald Trump visited the NIH for a first-hand look at the effort to develop a vaccine to combat the deadly novel coronavirus. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, credited Corbett for her lead role in developing the vaccine.

Corbett was born in the small town of Hurdle Mills, N.C. She earned a B.S. in biological sciences in 2008 from the University of Maryland – Baltimore County and a Ph.D. in microbiology and immunology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2014.