Kizzmekia “Kizzy” Shanta Corbett is an American viral immunologist at the Vaccine Research Center (VRC) at the National Institutes of Health based in Bethesda, Maryland. She was appointed to the VRC in 2014 and is currently the scientific lead of the VRC’s Coronavirus Team, that worked with Moderna, the pharmaceutical company that developed one of the two mRNA vaccines to fight COVID-19. Her efforts will make her someone who will go down in history as one of the key players in developing the science that could end the pandemic.

According to her biography, Dr. Corbett received a B.S. in Biological Sciences, with a secondary major in Sociology, in 2008 from the University of Maryland – Baltimore County, where she was a Meyerhoff Scholar and an NIH undergraduate scholar. She then enrolled at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she obtained her Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology in 2014.

Dr. Corbett first made headlines in March as part of a team of scientists who spoke with the President at the NIH. When asked by ABC reporters, she stated, “I felt like it was necessary to be seen and to not be a hidden figure so to speak. I felt that it was important to do that because the level of visibility that it would have to younger scientists and also to people of color who have often worked behind the scenes and essentially done the dirty work for these large efforts toward a vaccine.”

We celebrate Kizzy Corbett during Black History Month and thank her for the role she played in creating a vaccine that many of our employees have now had the opportunity to get.