Kizzmekia Corbett-Helaire

Kizzmekia Corbett-Helaire (born January 26, 1986) is an American viral immunologist. She is an assistant professor of immunology and infectious diseases at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Shutzer Assistant Professor at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute since June 2021. She's an African American woman. Quotes We talk about purpose a lot, whether it be in the church or in academic institutions ... I had to step back and just say, ‘Who else?’ People at the N.I.H. would have overlooked Black women if I failed. Being the first in so many kinds of these spaces has so much pressure I felt like there was no room for mistakes, which was difficult because science – mistakes are actually part of the beauty of it. Not necessarily tons of mistakes, but you learn a lot from things that don’t necessarily always go right with experiments. But in this case, we only had the bandwidth to learn from things that were going to go right. Otherwise, you lost time and people died. 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. If you can unwind and be true to who you are, it helps to reckon with things. My team is responding to the world’s most devastating global pandemic in the last hundred years. And so, there’s something to be said about knowing who you are. I felt like it was necessary to be seen and to not be a hidden figure so to speak. External links Category:1986 births Category:Living people Category:American women immunologists Category:American women medical researchers Category:American medical researchers Category:American vaccinologists Category:COVID-19 researchers * Category:National Institutes of Health faculty Category:Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health faculty Category:Graduate Women in Science members Category:University of Maryland, Baltimore County alumni Category:University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill alumni Category:University of North Carolina School of Medicine alumni Category:Scientists from North Carolina Category:People from Hillsborough, North Carolina