Online science and tech magazine Motherboard has selected MHRP’s director Col. Nelson Michael as a "Human of the Year" for his work developing vaccines for HIV and other emerging diseases, namely Ebola and Zika.
In their selection, Motherboard aimed to “focus on a few enterprising individuals in science and tech in particular — people whose names you may not recognize right away, but whose work has the potential to touch your life and change the world in a positive and novel way.”
Dubbing Col. Michael "The Vaccine Hunter," the Motherboard profile praises both his recent work in helping to develop WRAIR's Zika vaccine candidate and his decades of work on HIV.
"It's been extremely helpful to me to work on Ebola and Zika because these are, frankly, easier nuts to crack," Col. Michael says in the profile. "I don't want to say it's easy but the honest truth is, in the history of making vaccines, the Superbowl is a vaccine for HIV."
Col. Michael was interviewed by Motherboard reporters for an article last year about WRAIR’s Zika Purified Inactive Virus (ZPIV) vaccine candidate, which progressed from concept to human trials in less than one year.
Read Col. Michael's Human of the Year profile at Motherboard.