CAROLINA ON OUR MIND HAP P ENIN G S AT U N C
On the Fro nt L ine
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When the pandemic hit last year, UNC alumna and Hillsborough native Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett led a team that developed the vaccine
ast spring, Albert Russell watched with pride and a touch of amazement as TV newscasts aired pictures of a 34-year-old scientist at the National Institutes of Health, explaining to the president of the United States about promising new developments for a coronavirus vaccine. Albert got to know the scientist, Kizzmekia “Kizzy” Corbett, in summer 2002 when she was a precocious 16-year-old working in UNC’s Kenan Laboratories on a Project Seed internship for gifted minorities. He was studying for his 2003 doctorate from UNC in organic chemistry and was one of her mentors. Kizzy stood out because of her relentless curiosity and how quickly she mastered scientific techniques. In other ways, she was a typical teenager, captivated by texting with friends and enthralled by the singer Kelly Rowland. Albert stood out to Kizzy, too: He was the only African American scientist in the lab. He helped her not only think like a scientist but also see herself as one. By summer’s end, Kizzy knew the career she wanted. Eighteen years later, when then-President Donald Trump visited NIH, Kizzy was the only African American scientist in the laboratory that day – and the only woman and the youngest person by decades. As scientific lead in the effort to find a vaccine, it fell to her to help answer the president’s questions. Dressed in a starched white lab coat, she pointed to a colorful computer rendition of the lethal spike protein that allows the coronavirus to bind to human cells. The former president nodded along while Kizzy instructed. “That’s totally not what you expect to see in science,” said Albert, chemistry department chair at Tuskegee University in Alabama. “You expect to see Dr. Anthony Fauci, a white guy with gray hair. Now your superhero doesn’t look like you, doesn’t talk like you, doesn’t dress like you – but has the capability to save the world.” For the previous six years, Kizzy had managed a team of scientists at the Vaccine Research Center in Bethesda, Maryland, creating experimental vaccines for the SARS and MERS coronaviruses, among others. Their work – in partnership with biotech company Moderna Therapeutics – gave them a jump-start on the novel coronavirus, which is 78% genetically identical to SARS. 28
chapelhillmagazine.com
March 2021
“She was in the perfect place at the right moment,” said Ralph Baric, professor of epidemiology, microbiology and immunology in UNC’s Gillings School of Global Public Health. Ralph has devoted 35 years to studying coronaviruses and served on Kizzy’s graduate committee at Carolina. Their labs are collaborating. “In the high-pressure, rapid-response environment, a huge number of people are making massive contributions,” he said, “and she’s one of them, and she’s playing a central role.” THEY’RE ‘B ANKING ON US’ n a record 66 days, an experimental COVID-19 vaccine was injected into the first human volunteers. “I could just cry,” Kizzy tweeted March 28, 2020. “Our vaccine is really into human beings, y’all!!!” The pressure was intense. “A lot of people are banking on us or feel that we have a product that could, at least, be part of the answer this world needs,” she told NBC News in April 2020. “And, well, whew, just saying that out loud is not easy.” To cope, she relied on meditation, prayer and phone sessions with her therapist. In the heady days following the former president’s visit, national publications and newscasts sought out Kizzy for interviews, adding another level of pressure. She temporarily became the face of the NIH, poised and personable, adept at conveying complicated science to nonscientists. In an interview with Black Enterprise magazine, Kizzy described herself: “I am Christian. I’m Black. I am Southern, I’m an empath. I’m feisty, sassy and fashionable. That’s kind of how I describe myself. I would say that my role as a scientist is really about my passion and purpose for the world and for giving back to the world.” She is known in scientific circles for being consumed by work, passionate about helping others, generous with her time and not afraid to speak her mind. Outside of work, “the nonscience Kizzy” is known for her humor and sense of style and for remembering friends’ birthdays and anniversaries. She calls herself “a science nerd.” But, as Albert put it, “she’s not a typical pocket-protector scientist.” She starts her days to the edgy sound of rapper Jeezy’s Thug Motivation 101 and ends them with a glass of wine. Before the country shut down in response to the coronavirus, she
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