Kizzmekia Corbett remembers it like it was yesterday. She was sitting on her mother’s couch in Hillsborough on New Years Eve 2019 when an email popped up on her phone. The subject line: “Get ready for 2020.”

The email was from her boss at the National Institutes of Health in Washington, and included an attachment of a news article describing how 27 people in Wuhan, China, had been stricken by a mysterious respiratory illness.

At the Guilford College Bryan Series program at the Steven Tanger Center for the Performing Arts, Corbett, a North Carolina native and Assistant Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at Harvard University, shared her gripping story with the audience that there was little more information for her and other NIH scientists to go by. 

“At the time, it was unclear that it was a coronavirus,” she said. “At the time, it was certainly unclear that we would be heading towards a deadly pandemic.But, what was clear was that the NIH Vaccine Research Center, the most renowned vaccine research institution in the world would have to respond.”

A group of scientists, led by Corbett, did just that. Working with Moderna, an American pharmaceutical and biotechnology company, Corbett’s team made a goal of creating a vaccine that could be ready for a clinical trial within 100 days.

Turns out, the NIH and Moderna needed only 66 days to develop a vaccine ready for clinical trial and had a vaccine authorized for use in under a year. 

Corbett gave ample credit to the skilled scientists who led an all-hands effort to invent the tools that ultimately ended the pandemic. But she also says the NIH had a jump on the virus “almost as if the universe laid out the plan for us.”

Pressure took a toll

For the past few years, Corbett said, the NIH had been working on a particular technology called messenger RNA or “mRNA”, in collaboration with Moderna.

Messenger RNA is the step before making protein. “Your body needs protein, therefore your body needs mRNA,” said Corbett. “And, if your body needed a specific protein, like the one required to make the antibodies against coronavirus, we could create a specific mRNA so that now your body can make that protein on its own, naturally.”

“People sometimes say that the vaccine was developed too fast, but they don’t understand just how prepared we were for the moment,” said Corbett.

Corbett said many people could never “understand the burden of about 3,000 Americans dying each day in the height of the pandemic, and feeling like you are not working fast enough.” 

“I wish I could explain the pit in my spirit as people proclaimed their distrust of the very work I’d poured my soul into – all while being isolated from my family and going through one of the most devastating heartbreaks I’d ever experienced in my life,” she said.

“There was loneliness. There was heartache. There was anxiety. There was pressure that was as equally motivating as it was crippling. It all took its toll on me. And, if I’m being honest, it continues to take its toll,” she said. “I lost weight. I grieved. I gained more weight. I cried.”

Corbett also says she would do it all over again. “I am still very grateful for the privilege to have had the experience,” she told the audience. I am grateful for the privilege to have served. Even if I didn’t really know why I was serving. I just showed up to do good science.”

Corbett was named one of Time magazine’s four heroes of the year in 2021 for helping develop the mRNA-based vaccine platform that enabled the creation of innovative and highly effective treatments like Moderna’s and other COVID-19 vaccines.

Life-changing lab

Not bad for a kid from Hurdle Mills (about 25 miles northwest of Burlington) who got hooked on science when she teamed up with her cousin to win her third-grade science fair.

“I didn’t even know that being a scientist was even a career path,” she said.

All that changed in the summer before her junior year in high school when she was able to work in an organic chemistry lab at the University of North Carolina. “I was able to use cutting edge equipment, I was able to work with world-renowned experts, and I developed a passion for the scientific process,” she said. “I … just knew that I had to pursue science as a career.  

After high school Corbett attended the University of Maryland at Baltimore County as a Meyerhoff Scholar. She worked at the NIH to help pay for college before enrolling at UNC, where she earned her doctorate in viral immunology.

Corbett told the Bryan Series audience of 1,400 that everyone has a responsibility moving beyond the pandemic to make the world better. “Around the globe, nearly 8 million children lost their primary caretaker. Eight million! We must not let their deaths be in vain,” she said. 

Everyone has something to contribute,” she said. “You may not know what your duty is to the community at large just yet. Kinda like me. I just showed up and was the best scientist that I could be without much reward for it in the beginning. 

“Whether your job is in a boardroom or a classroom. The work that you do is always bigger than you.”

Earlier in the day, Kizzmekia met with about two dozen Guilford students at Founders Hall to discuss her educational journey and offer guidance for many of the students who hope to one day work in science or health care. "Life is not a rush," she told them. "Slow down and find your passion. OK, maybe you already know your passion is in science, but what specifically in science. There's nothing wrong with a gap year to learn more about you and what makes you passionate."    

The Bryan Series continues later this month with celebrity chef and global humanitarian Jose Andres speaking Tuesday, Feb. 28. The season concludes with Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Ronan Farrow on April 4. Tickets are available at the Tanger Box Officer and at Ticketmaster.com.