Her talk will focus on her journey in science and leading the development of a vaccine for COVID-19. Tickets are available at the Tanger Center box office or Ticketmaster.com.
 
Born in Hurdle Mills, N.C., which straddles the Orange and Person county lines about 50 miles east of Greensboro, Kizzmekia earned her doctorate in Microbiology and Immunology at UNC Chapel Hill. 

She’s now 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.

Her fourth grade teacher at Oak Lane Elementary in Roxboro, N.C., Myrtis Bradsher, says she encouraged Kizzy’s mother to place her in advanced classes, recalling, "I always thought she is going to do something one day. She dotted i's and crossed t's. The best in my 30 years of teaching."

While at Orange High School in Hillsborough, N.C., she realized that she wanted to pursue a scientific career, and as part of an American Chemical Society-sponsored program spent her summer working in research laboratories, one of which was at UNC's Kenan Labs.

She became a research fellow working as a viral immunologist at the National Institutes of Health in October 2014. Six years later she was a well-recognized African American woman at the forefront of the development of a vaccine to combat COVID-19.

In her profile among 2021 TIME 100 Next honorees, Dr. Anthony Fauci wrote, “(Dr. Corbett) is widely recognized in the immunology community as a rising star ... her work will have a substantial impact on ending the worst respiratory-disease pandemic in more than 100 years.”

She was featured among four scientists as TIME’s Heroes of the Year in a December 2021 cover story.

The Bryan Series season continues with chef and global humanitarian Jose Andres on Tuesday, Feb. 28, and Pulitzer-winning investigative reporter Ronan Farrow on Tuesday, April 4.