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Some Science Nerd!

(Photo by Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

When COVID-19 hit, Kizzmekia Corbett ’14 already had led a team that developed a coronavirus vaccine.  Kizzy is drawing attention on the front line again.

by Elizabeth Leland ’76

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.

Russell got to know the scientist, Kizzmekia Corbett, in summer 2002 when Corbett was a precocious 16-year-old working in Carolina’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.

Corbett 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.

Russell stood out to Corbett, too: He was the only African American scientist in the lab. He helped her not only think like a scientist but see herself as one. By summer’s end, Corbett knew the career she wanted.

Eighteen years later, when the president visited NIH, Corbett 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 Donald Trump’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. Trump nodded along while Corbett instructed.

“That’s totally not what you expect to see in science,” said Russell, 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, Corbett had managed a team of scientists at the Vaccine Research Center in Bethesda, Md., 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 percent genetically identical to SARS.
“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. Baric has devoted 35 years to studying coronaviruses and served on Corbett’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 “banking on us”

In a record 66 days, an experimental COVID-19 vaccine was injected into the first human volunteers. “I could just cry,” Corbett tweeted March 28. “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. “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 Trump’s visit, national publications and newscasts sought out Corbett 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, Corbett 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 Russell 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 rushed out to get her eyebrows sculpted and “an emergency hair weave.”

Data inform Corbett’s science while her faith informs her life. She told TarHelium, a publication of the American Chemical Society, that a line from North Carolina rapper J. Cole “is the driver of what I consider to be my ‘Purpose.’ ” Cole rapped: “Believe in GOD like the sun up in the sky. SCIENCE can tell us how, but it can’t tell us why.”

To which, Corbett adds: “You can design an interesting experiment to answer just about anything. But I think that only the universe — and I use universe and God synonymously — can answer the why. That is one overarching question that science just won’t answer. I kind of love that.”

Corbett presents herself on Twitter as someone who can talk about the virus to just about anyone — “from the trap house to the White House.” It’s important, she says, to make science relatable. “That’s why I tweet about science, but also about my weaves, and my family, and my religion, and whatever I feel,” she wrote in March. “‘My science is the world’s’ but how will I get it to them if I don’t EARN their trust?”

“She’s so bright, and the work she does is really complicated and complex, but she has never altered who she is,” said writer Nancy Curlee Demorest, a family friend from Hillsborough, where Corbett graduated from Orange High School in 2004. “I love the way she has preached to her community on Twitter and had such a big impact. And she’s speaking in the vernacular, and she’s making it real. You can feel her energy.”

“Absorb anything she could”

Corbett comes from a large, close family, one she described as “generations of just plain GIVING A HOOT about others.” Her mother still sends her care packages; her grandmothers pray for her every night. Corbett calls their family a “mixed family” because she and her six siblings are a blend of stepchildren, foster children and adopted children raised by her mother, Rhonda Brooks, and stepfather, Terrence Brooks.

“They have a yours, mine and ours, and anybody else’s child who’s been abandoned kind of family,” Demorest said. “Her sense of identity and sense of self is tremendous because she’s gotten so much love and so much support.”

Corbett said her father often told her, “I don’t care what you’re going to be, but whatever it is make sure you’re the best at it.”

Over the years, support also has come from a string of mentors. In addition to Russell, they include James Morken, who taught chemistry at Carolina from 1997 to 2006 and ran the University’s organic chemistry lab where Corbett interned in high school. Corbett often is asked how a woman from a small town in North Carolina ended up in such a visible and important position. Her short answer: mentorship.

“A lot of times to get to where you want to go — and I’m still not where I fully want to go — it helps to have someone see in you the possibilities and guide you in that way,” she said. “Basically, I stand on the shoulders of giants, and they help me see.”

In January, she emailed Morken a copy of a New York Times article about her role in helping develop a coronavirus vaccine and thanked him “for introducing me to amino acids.”

“The research she did was technically sophisticated,” said Morken, now professor of chemistry at Boston College. The title of a paper Corbett wrote that summer suggests the complexity of her research: “The Effect of Chiral Phosphoramidites on a Platinum-Catalyzed, Enantioselective Diene Aldehyde-Silylborane Coupling.”

“What I remember most is her tremendous curiosity about science,” Morken said. “She was eager to learn, eager to just absorb anything she could.”

While in college at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Corbett met her future boss and one of her current mentors during an internship at the Vaccine Research Center. Dr. Barney Graham, who is deputy director of the center, asked what she wanted to do with her life.

“I want your job,” the 19-year-old Corbett replied.

When Corbett returned to North Carolina to get a doctorate in microbiology and immunology, she and Kari Debbink met during orientation. Once again, Corbett stood out. “I just remember her being the most vocal and the best about asking really intelligent questions,” said Debbink ’14 (PhD). “She’s not afraid to ask questions, and that’s something I really admire about her.”

Also this: “She makes you feel like you’re important.”

Corbett explains her work to an audience that includes, in center, Dr. Francis Collins ’77 (MD), director of the National Institutes of Health; Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; and President Donald Trump. Previously, she had managed a team at the Vaccine Research Center for six years.(AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Head start on the virus

The two scientists remain friends. Debbink invited Corbett to speak last year at Bowie State University in Maryland, where Debbink is an assistant professor. Corbett’s topic: Development of a coronavirus vaccine.

“Nobody cared about coronavirus at the time,” Debbink said. “The fact that she’s gotten to be front and center for NIH’s coronavirus vaccine is amazing. But she’s in that position in the first place because she recognized coronavirus as an area that would be important in the future, and she worked on it. It comes from a place of empathy to make the world better.

“Now little kids all over the United States can look at her and say: ‘She’s a scientist. She’s fashionable and fun and cool, and she does major work in science and is making this big discovery.’ ”

Now that Corbett is in a position to mentor others, she advises students to assemble “a career committee” of people they see themselves becoming and people who recognize their potential. “It really helps to have an honest, open communication,” she said. “Ask them: What am I doing wrong? How can I change? Am I on the right path? Is this the right step?”

She realizes that one reason she attracted attention is because “I look different.” She believes that’s a good thing — that diversity is key to productivity in all facets of life.

“In order to have diverse ideas you have to have a pool of diverse backgrounds,” she told the News of Orange County in February. “My background as a Black woman from rural North Carolina might be different than other people who are in the field.”

But the attention also led to backlash. One person suggested she “go back to McDonalds where you belong” — the type of racism Corbett has endured for much of her life. Criticism exploded across the internet in response to one of her tweets following reports that Black people were dying disproportionately from the virus.

“I tweet for the people who will die when doctors [have] to choose who gets the last ventilator and ultimately … who lives,” Corbett posted on March 29. A couple of weeks later, someone replied that the virus “is a way to get rid of us.” Corbett’s 13-word response went viral: “Some have gone as far to call it genocide. I plead the fifth.”

In a webinar for minority STEM students in May, she noted the criticism. Asked whether she has “haters” on social media and how she responds, Corbett said: “I don’t know if you can necessarily call them haters. Some people are never going to be satisfied. That’s why you have to satisfy yourself. I think that criticism is something that — as hard as it is to take sometimes — it’s something we should all heed to, no matter from whom it comes. And, of course, everyone doesn’t have your best interests at heart. But they go low, we go high — however Michelle [Obama] said it.”

Her parents, she said, reminded her that when her scholarships were announced in high school, some people booed. “People are going to hate what they can’t compete with. Period. And so just let your work speak for itself. Keep it moving.”

Dr. Scott Royal ’19 (MD), who worked with Corbett at Carolina on developing a better vaccine for dengue fever, said he feels “safe and secure” knowing she’s the scientific lead in the NIH’s effort. He remembered Corbett as insightful but not afraid to be wrong, laser-focused on her work but also in charge of the annual Secret Santa gift exchange.

“I feel like she’s the right person to get this done on schedule and on time,” said Royal, now a pediatric resident at Medstar Georgetown University Hospital in Washington. “She’s not going to let anything slow this process down. I think she’s going to be on top of it and make sure it’s a safe vaccine for everyone.”

“On top of it” has sometimes meant all-nighters in the lab in Bethesda, harkening back to Corbett’s days in Chapel Hill when she was writing her dissertation and would stay home during the day and work in the lab at night. She resumed that midnight-to-8 a.m. work routine for a while this year to avoid exposure to the coronavirus.

And so it was that at 5:30 one morning, she took to Twitter to explain to one of her nearly 50,000 followers the difference between a sequence and a strain of the novel coronavirus, adding: “I cannot believe I’m explaining phylogeny in lay terms at 5:30 am; what is my life? vs. I LOVE IT.”

Elizabeth Leland ’76 is a freelance writer based in Charlotte.


 

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