An Orange County native and a UNC professor received the state’s highest civilian honor last week for their respective efforts in the ongoing fight against COVID-19.

Kizzmekia Corbett and Ralph Baric were among nine recipients of the North Carolina Award, presented by Gov. Roy Cooper at a ceremony on November 18 at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh.

Born in Hurdle Mills, Corbett graduated from Orange High School in 2004 and received a PhD in microbiology and immunology from UNC. Now at Harvard University, Corbett led the team that developed the Moderna vaccine, building on past research into similar viruses to produce a new vaccine for COVID in only two months.

Baric is the William R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor in UNC’s Department of Epidemiology and holds a PhD in microbiology. Baric’s lab has made UNC a world-renowned leader in coronavirus research; in the fight against COVID-19, his work helped develop not only vaccines, but also effective treatments like remdesivir. The North Carolina Award is not his only recent honor: last month, Baric also received the 2021 O. Max Gardner Award, which goes each year to a single faculty member in the UNC system who has “made the greatest contribution to the welfare of the human race.”

Both Baric and Corbett won the 2020 North Carolina Award for Science, along with National Institutes of Health director Dr. Francis Collins. Dr. Collins also has local ties: he received his MD from UNC in 1977.

In addition to Baric, Collins, and Corbett, Gov. Cooper also bestowed the North Carolina Award on six other recipients, several with local ties. Durham natives Dudley Flood and André Leon Talley received awards, Flood for his work to desegregate North Carolina schools and Talley for his contributions to fashion. Other recipients included folk musician/historian David Holt; influential state administrator Maria Spaulding; and two Duke professors, Duke Hearing Center director Blake Wilson and historian Timothy Tyson, who also teaches at UNC.

 

Featured photos via Kizzmekia Corbett and UNC-Chapel Hill.

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