Akiko Iwasaki

While much of the world tries to forget Covid-19 ever happened, Iwasaki’s research into — and communication about — the coronavirus and long Covid has amassed her more than 200,000 Twitter followers and made her an indispensable source for journalists covering the still-mysterious illness that follows an initial Covid infection. Among her 2022 publications were a preprint study identifying immunological differences in people with long Covid, a Nature study on the neurobiology of the chronic condition, and a paper in Science about her promising work into a Covid vaccine that would not be a shot, but a nasal spray.