May 29, 2020

If the global pandemic has taught us anything, it’s how to adjust to the unexpected. That’s what three NIH Medical Research Scholars have been learning since NIH shifted into extreme telework mode to prevent spread of Covid-19.

They were already big-wave surfers over at the Office of Extramural Research, that group responsible for the orderly, shrewd, fair—and seemingly invisible—distribution of about 80 percent of NIH’s annual budget. So it takes more than a pandemic to knock them off their surfboards.

NIAID researchers are using new technologies to develop a vaccine against Covid-19 as fast as possible, said Dr. Barney Graham, Vaccine Research Center deputy director. “Since 2009, a number of key technologies have emerged. They have increased our capacity for making new vaccines,” he said during an NIH Covid-19 scientific interest group lecture on Apr. 22.