On Republic Day, patriotism is often expressed in familiar symbols of the red, white and black, the national anthem, the flag. There are, however, quieter ways to express national dedication that happen without pomp and ceremony: in a laboratory.
For Professor Christine Carrington, a Trinidad and Tobago virologist and molecular epidemiologist, science has become precisely that kind of quiet and steadfast service.
Holder of a Chaconia Medal Gold, Carrington will be awarded the Inspirational Advocate Award by the International Women’s Forum on September 29, acknowledging her over 30 years of experience researching infectious diseases, with expertise in genomic surveillance, virus evolution and phylodynamics.
Moreover, Carrington stepped up when her country needed her the most—spearheading research behind the evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic and providing information for the country’s crucial decision-making at that time.
Carrington’s fascination with the natural world began long before she knew what a career in virology might look like. The second of three daughters, she grew up in a family where education was deeply ingrained in their tradition. Her mother was a biology teacher, her father a university professor, and there were teachers on both sides of the family.
At home, curiosity was encouraged rather than contained. Her mother would point out plants and animals in the garden, while coffee table books filled with nature photography and documentaries offered windows into a world far beyond her immediate environment.
David Attenborough documentaries were a particular favourite. Her father, though a linguist and educator, was also fascinated by science and technology and encouraged his daughters to question, observe and experiment: to be little scientists.
By the time she left primary school, Carrington already imagined her future having something to do with biology. At St Augustine Girls’ High School, that interest became more defined. Biology was the subject that held her attention, but it was a Form Six module on viruses that changed the direction of her curiosity.
She had always loved science fiction, particularly stories about alien invasions, and there was something almost otherworldly about viruses: microscopic entities entering cells, replicating and spreading through populations. “To me, viruses were like alien invasions,” she recalled. “It was fascinating.”
Self-described as a “naturally curious person and an avid learner,” Carrington initially followed the science of biotechnology rather than virology. Her first degree, at King’s College, London, introduced her to the idea of biological systems as factories, using organisms such as bacteria to produce useful products, from the familiar example of brewing beer to more sophisticated applications such as genetically modifying bacteria to produce insulin. Molecular engineering opened another world of possibilities.
Yet during her biotechnology programme, one course in virology brought her back to the fascination that had begun in secondary school. She was hooked. Her later PhD focused on a cancer-causing virus and involved intensive laboratory research in molecular genetics, cloning and other technology-heavy techniques.
Returning to T&T after completing her PhD brought a different reality. There were not yet the necessary resources to replicate all of the laboratory work she had been doing overseas with the same ease or efficiency.
Rather than seeing that as the end of the road, Carrington shifted towards phylogenetics and virus evolution, using genetic information to reconstruct the relationships between viruses and understand how they emerge, spread and change.
By building genetic “family trees”, researchers can trace where and when viral lineages emerged, how they moved across geographic regions and the factors driving their evolution. It was a field that allowed Carrington to continue asking the questions that had always interested her while building expertise that would later prove critical to the region.
In 2020, when the world was rocked by the explosion of COVID, her expertise became especially consequential. Before the pandemic, Carrington and her collaborators had already been studying viruses including dengue and chikungunya and examining the factors that influence viral emergence and spread.
The work quickly expanded beyond this country. As variants of concern emerged and the World Health Organization called for routine genomic surveillance, Carrington received a call from the chief medical officer asking her laboratory to undertake sequencing and provide monthly reports. Her team ultimately sequenced samples from 17 countries until individual countries and CARPHA developed their own local capacity.
The work was not about predicting the future; rather, providing genetic information to public health officials trying to make difficult decisions for the country. This information would provide the critical foundation for decisions on medical resources and capacity, health and safety of the public, along with balancing economic needs and potential for spread.
Knowing which variant was circulating helped establish whether a lineage was spreading more rapidly or showing characteristics that might allow it to evade immunity, contributing to decisions around testing, quarantine, borders and other interventions.
For Carrington, one of the most significant outcomes of that period was not only the data produced but the people who produced it. Years before COVID-19, she had trained students and technicians in molecular techniques, bioinformatics and virus evolution, work that some might have considered too theoretical or too removed from immediate application.
When the emergency came, those skills became indispensable. Her students and laboratory team formed part of the backbone of the country’s testing and sequencing response. It was a striking demonstration of why investment in basic research matters: knowledge that appears academic in one moment can become national infrastructure in another.
The work did not end when the acute phase of COVID-19 did. Carrington and her colleagues have continued working with the Ministries of Health and Agriculture and Fisheries on strengthening integrated molecular testing across the “One Health” sectors, an approach recognising that human, animal and environmental health are deeply interconnected.
The goal is to prevent institutions from operating in silos, encouraging the sharing of information and building the capacity to detect threats earlier. At The University of the West Indies, that work is also being extended through a new campus centre focused on genomics for pandemic preparedness, which Carrington hopes will become a successful and sustainable part of the region’s scientific infrastructure.
There is an unmistakably patriotic dimension to her scientific ambitions, although Carrington does not frame her work in grand terms.
Her idea of legacy is surprisingly personal: her students. She wants to see the young researchers in T&T whom she trained become internationally respected scientists whose expertise is recognised on the same level as that of researchers anywhere else in the world.
She wants T&T and the wider Caribbean to have the ability to generate knowledge rather than always having to send questions elsewhere for answers. And she wants genomic surveillance to become more closely connected to public health decision-making, so that when the next outbreak comes, whether in years or decades, the region has people, equipment, institutions and knowledge ready to respond.
At 58, with her 59th birthday approaching in December, Professor Carrington has spent much of her life proving that scientific excellence and national service need not be separate pursuits.
She has also become an advocate for women in STEM, drawing on a childhood in which she was never told there were things she should not take apart, questions she should not ask or careers that were unsuitable because she was a girl. She acknowledges that women remain underrepresented at the highest levels of science, even as their numbers have grown substantially. She has encountered sexism herself, including being asked to take minutes at a meeting where she was present as an expert.
Carrington has exemplified service to the country in a variety of ways. Her service to the field of research when the country was in an extreme emergency, her service to building capacity and infrastructure in her field and her service to her students. She is a teacher who sends generations of scientists into the world, in her own quiet way, helping to shape the future of Trinidad and Tobago.
