Carnegie Mellon University
December 09, 2021

Moderna Launches AI Academy in Partnership with Carnegie Mellon University

Mara Falk
  • Tepper School of Business
  • 412-268-3486
Colleen Hussey
  • Director, Corporate Communications, Moderna, Inc.
  • 617-335-1374

Moderna, Inc., (Nasdaq: MRNA) a biotechnology company pioneering messenger RNA (mRNA) therapeutics and vaccines, today announced the launch of its Artificial Intelligence (AI) Academy, an innovative initiative that will bring to life an immersive learning experience for Moderna employees, in partnership with Carnegie Mellon University (CMU).

The AI Academy is intended to educate and empower employees at all levels to identify and integrate AI and machine learning solutions into every Moderna system and process to bring mRNA medicines to patients.

“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,” said Stéphane Bancel, chief executive officer of Moderna. “As we look at the next 10-20 years, we believe that we have to learn as fast as we can to maximize the impact of mRNA technologies to patients and scale our company in a very different way than large companies have scaled in the last decades. We believe 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 ways of working, part of our DNA. We look forward to driving this with Carnegie Mellon’s team.” 

CMU’s Department of Statistics & Data Science, a part of the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences, and the Tepper School of Business are collaborating with professors across the university to design and deliver Moderna’s AI Academy. This unique program will deliver a tailored curriculum structured for working professionals focused on topics including data quality and data visualization, statistical thinking and models, machine learning algorithms and AI ethics.  The breadth and depth of content will help all 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. U.S. News & World Report ranks CMU as the top university for graduate education in AI, as well as computer science.

“We are excited to deliver a world-class AI curriculum to Moderna and support the company’s deep-rooted commitment to discovery and innovation that protects public health,” said CMU President Farnam Jahanian. “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. It’s rewarding to partner with a pioneering biotech company that is dedicated to adapting its business and its workforce to this critical technology.”

Moderna will launch the program next week with its first cohort of students and is targeting early 2022 for the full rollout.