Science & Technology

Kizzmekia Corbett

Born January 26, 1986 · Hurdle Mills, North Carolina

The immunologist who was the scientific lead behind the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine — Kizzmekia Corbett's decade of coronavirus research helped save millions of lives during the pandemic.

Known For

Key scientist behind Moderna COVID vaccine

Field

Viral immunology

Role

Assistant Professor at Harvard

Kizzmekia Shanta Corbett grew up in Hurdle Mills, a small rural community in North Carolina. A standout student, she attended the University of Maryland, Baltimore County on a Meyerhoff Scholarship — a program designed to increase diversity in STEM — and earned her Ph.D. in microbiology and immunology from UNC Chapel Hill.

Corbett joined the National Institutes of Health's Vaccine Research Center in 2014, where she spent years studying coronaviruses — research that proved prescient when COVID-19 emerged. As the scientific lead of the Coronavirus Vaccines & Immunopathogenesis Team, her work on the spike protein was fundamental to the development of the Moderna mRNA vaccine.

During the pandemic, Corbett also became a trusted public voice, particularly in Black communities where vaccine hesitancy was high. She participated in town halls, social media campaigns, and church visits to share the science behind the vaccines. In 2023, she joined Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health as an assistant professor, continuing her work on next-generation vaccines.