SOCORRO, N.M. – New Mexico Tech is hosting a special online seminar with an expert panel to discuss vaccinations. This event is geared toward students, and follows a similar event for NMT employees.

New faculty member Dr. Joel Sharbrough is the organizer and host of the panel. His guest experts are NMT's Dr. Thomas L. Kieft, Dr. Snezna Rogelj, and Dr. Danielle Turner, as well as UNM's Jeffrey Michael Gorvetzian and Dr. Bryce Chakerian, and Family Physician Dr. Steven M. Stewart. 

Registration for the panel is required. To register, please follow this link and fill out the necessary information at the Google Form.

(At right is a screenshot of the February 22 expert panel on vaccines organized by the NMT Biology Department.)

Would you like to know more about the available COVID-19 vaccines? Why do young, healthy adults need to get the vaccine? Are you worried about the possible side effects of receiving the vaccine?

Sharbrough arranged these panels to help address questions and concerns. The COVID-19 Vaccine Information Panel for NMT students will be at 6 p.m. Thursday, March 4. 

The panel will discuss historical vaccine campaigns in comparison to the current COVID-19 pandemic, vaccine technology and how the human body develops immunity to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the FDA vaccine approval process, and the current safety and efficacy data for the vaccines available in the United States. The panel will also feature answers to a number of audience questions.

“We, as the Biology Department faculty, decided that we need to tell people that the vaccine is safe and it won’t give you three heads,” Sharbrough said. “And it will prevent you from getting COVID.”

Sharbrough and the panelists hosted a similar event on Monday, Feb. 22, for NMT employees. The event was a wild success, with many thoughtful questions posed from participants.

Click here to watch the February 22 panel on YouTube.

“The Q&A was awesome,” Sharbrough said. “I was struck by how many people had good questions that aren’t being answered in general answers, not even in reputable, good news sources. In this forum, we are able to address technical and ethical questions that reasonable people come up with.”

To submit questions to the panelists and to provide some simple pre-panel survey information, please fill out the linked Google Form.

– NMT –