Industry News

Moderna Launches Artificial Intelligence Academy for mRNA Therapies

The initiative will educate Moderna employees to integrate artificial intelligence and machine learning solutions into every system and process.

Artificial Intelligence, mRNA Therapies

Source: Getty Images

By Samantha McGrail

- Moderna and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) recently launched its Artificial Intelligence (AI) Academy to bring mRNA therapies to patients.

The initiative will bring an immersive learning experience to Moderna employees and educate employees to integrate AI and machine learning solutions into every Moderna system.

“Moderna is advancing mRNA medicines at a breadth, speed, and scale that is uncommon in the biopharmaceutical industry, and we attribute this speed in part to the incorporation of digital technologies in our company,” Stéphane Bancel, CEO of Moderna, said in the announcement.

“AI is a key enabler of our ability to build the best version of Moderna now and into the future. This AI academy will enable us to make AI part of the company’s ways of working, part of our DNA. We look forward to driving this with Carnegie Mellon’s team,” Bancel continued.

CMU’s department of statistics and data science and the Tepper School of Business are currently collaborating with professors across the university to design and deliver Moderna’s AI Academy.

The program will deliver a tailored curriculum structured for working professionals and focus on data quality and visualization, statistical thinking and models, machine learning algorithms, and AI ethics.

The content of the Academy will help employees think strategically about how to leverage AI in their specific job functions.

The AI Academy will connect Moderna staff directly with CMU’s faculty both in person and online using the Integrated Statistics Learning Environment (ISLE), an interactive educational platform developed at the university.

Top pharmaceutical companies are collaborating with AI vendors and leveraging AI technology in their manufacturing processes for research, development, and overall drug discovery.

In fact, reports show that nearly 62 percent of healthcare organizations are thinking of investing in AI and 72 percent of companies believe AI will be crucial to how they do business in the future.

Notably, US News & World Report ranked CMU as the top university for graduate education in AI and computer science, a Moderna spokesperson highlighted.

“With decades-long leadership in the field, Carnegie Mellon is uniquely positioned to help businesses learn how to use AI to drive the kinds of breakthroughs needed to address urgent societal challenges,” said Farnam Jahanian, president of CMU.