2024 Outstanding Young Alumni Award: Christina Arieta

Christina Arieta BS ’09 PhD ’14 is a recipient of the 2024 College of Natural Sciences (CNS) Outstanding Young Alumni Award. 

Arieta earned her Bachelor’s of Microbiology (’09) and her Doctorate of Animal Biotechnology & Biomedical Sciences (’14) from UMass Amherst. She is currently the Senior Director of Molecular Immunology at BioNTech US Inc. and provides scientific leadership for their next-generation COVID-19 vaccine program, among other aspects of the company's vaccine program. 

“I am very honored to receive this award,” said Arieta. “When I think about someone during my UMass career who has contributed to my success, I think of my advisor, Lisa Minter.  

“Lisa's mentorship went beyond science and laid the foundation for skills that have allowed me to be successful in the biotech industry. She taught me the importance of collaboration and working in cross-functional teams to solve complex biological problems, innovative thinking, and a passion for doing exciting science. Along with all of this, Lisa instilled within me the value which keeps me working so hard—using science to improve the lives of patients and help translate the work we do every day into survival.” 

Lisa Minter PhD ’01, who currently serves as department head and a professor in the College of Natural Sciences’s Department of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, had equally generous things to say about her relationship with Arieta: “It was a privilege to watch Tina grow scientifically, as well as personally, and to see her become a true leader within the lab, within the department, and within the greater university community. Tina was the driving force and founding member of an initiative that originated as a peer-mentoring group within the department, and later became the UMass Amherst Graduate Women in STEM (GWIS) organization. 

“Tina’s excellent education at UMass prepared her well to enter her career field of immunology and, as unforeseen events would have it, rise to meet the challenges of a global pandemic in significant and impactful ways, as Tina worked with her colleagues at BioNTech to develop the COVID-19 mRNA (messenger ribonucleic acid) vaccine. It is nothing short of amazing to consider what a crucial contribution Tina made to developing the COVID-19 vaccine, at a time when the whole world was suffering.” 

Michael A. Fox, PhD, Dean of the College of Natural Sciences, noted the immense impact that Arieta has already had, just a few years out of school: “At our commencement events, we tell our graduates to take the scientific skills and knowledge they learned at UMass Amherst and go have an impact on the world. In 2014, when Dr. Arieta received her doctorate degree, who could have seen that in just a few years she would take the knowledge and expertise she learned at CNS and apply it to help develop an mRNA vaccine desperately needed during a global pandemic. There is no doubt that Dr. Arieta, despite being early in her career, has already made an enormous impact on the regional, national, and global community. We are all incredibly proud to call her a CNS alumna!” 

As the SARS CoV-2—the virus that causes COVID-19—continues to mutate its SPIKE protein and produce new waves of infections, Arieta and BioNTech are testing a new approach to mRNA vaccines against SARS CoV-2, which has the potential to create a “universal,” long-lasting immunization.