Pandemic Fighter’s Priorities

ALUMNI PROFILES PROFILES DR. KATHLEEN NEUZIL ’83

Lifelong Terp Helps Lead Nation’s Vaccine Trials O

ne of the nation’s

leading scientists in the desperate campaign to develop coronavirus vaccines—and in the Hollywood-esque triumph of succeeding within a year—grew up just across the street from the University of Maryland. Underlying all that work is her hope of returning to campus.

“I’m fighting the pandemic partly so I can get back to my Terps season tickets,” says Dr. Kathleen Neuzil ’83, lamenting a men’s basketball season played in a mostly empty Xfinity Center.

The director of the Center for Vaccine Development and Global Health at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM), Neuzil pivoted at the pandemic’s outset in early 2020 to take on COVID-19, and has been inside a whirlwind ever since.

She’s one of two researchers leading the COVID-19 Prevention Trials Network for the National Institutes of Health, responsible for design and oversight of clinical trials of the vaccines now available stateside as well as those in the pipeline.

Neuzil’s friends and tight-knit family have watched her often round-the-clock effort without surprise; they say it’s in keeping with her seemingly boundless energy and drive.