SCIENTIFIC HEROES

She understood how important it was to work on the vaccine that became the first weapon against the deadly disease.

In 2015, after she had left Public Health and moved to the National Research Council in Ottawa, Giesbrecht showed Alimonti a newspaper article about the deadly West African Ebola outbreak. In it, a man who had received the experimental vaccine thanked Canada for saving his life.

“I know what I did helped this guy,” Giesbrecht recalled her saying.

“That is who I did this for, people like this. I don’t care about the rewards and recognition. This is why I did it.”

But Giesbrecht, for whom Alimonti’s death is still very raw, believes his late wife deserved more credit for the work she did.

“My wife put her heart and soul into this and worked day and night to the highest global standards.” He added: “She could have used more support.”

During the decade Alimonti spent with the public health agency, much of it working on the Ebola vaccine, she never had a permanent job, but worked contract to contract, Giesbrecht noted.

Alimonti was eventually offered a full-time job, which she turned down, said Giesbrecht, because it was not consistent with the level of work she had been doing.

She left the public health agency in 2015. She was disappointed, but didn’t dwell on it, Giesbrecht said.

Alimonti soon got a job with the National Research Council in Ottawa, where she worked on a vaccine against the Zika virus.

She was always positive and excited about the projects she was working on, Giesbrecht said.

She had often, in her life, been underestimated, he added.

At high school, she became a top athlete and keen jazz musician, an interest she kept up throughout her life. Later, she returned to school and became an internationally recognized scientist.

“She was a very humble person. She never thought of herself as some raging genius going to save the world.

“She just thought of herself as an ordinary scientist dedicated to doing her job — starting something to see where it goes, which is a very Canadian attitude.”

Alimonti was at work on a potential vaccine against the Zika virus when she was diagnosed with advanced cancer. She died last December in Ottawa.

She was a very humble person. She never thought of herself as some raging genius going to save the world. She just thought of herself as an ordinary scientist dedicated to doing her job.