Boosting Innovation: Moderna’s GenAI Training Strategy, including Coursera’s Generative AI for Everyone
- Industry:
Biotechnology and pharmaceuticals
- Location:
United States
- Size:
5,600+ employees
Overview
Moderna, a leading pharmaceutical company, is at the forefront of the biotech industry, using mRNA science to develop new medicines for patients. Moderna is leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to scale innovation and improve efficiency in nearly every aspect of its organization.
Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel emphasizes the power of AI: "Just as the personal computer changed the way we work and live, AI will completely transform our everyday lives. At Moderna, we are leading the charge of this AI revolution in medicine. It is as much about technology as it is about people and ensuring they have the right skills."
This case study details Moderna's partnership with Coursera, offering high-quality AI content and customized learning pathways to upskill its workforce and drive the company's growth strategy.
Challenge
Navigating the rapidly evolving biotech landscape with AI-driven innovation
Moderna set an ambitious goal to launch multiple products from its diverse pipeline over the next few years with a highly skilled but lean workforce that’s just a fraction of the size of the vast teams typical of large pharmaceutical companies. While AI has always been a crucial part of its strategy, Moderna is now empowering its employees to accelerate their work, through recent advancements in generative AI (GenAI).
Moderna recognized the need to expand its learning and development programs to provide comprehensive GenAI training, driven in part by its product launch goal. By harnessing GenAI’s full capabilities, Moderna aims to transform the daily work of its team members. This requires equipping employees with core GenAI competencies and the role-specific skills needed to drive innovation and advance Moderna’s mission to deliver the greatest possible impact to people through mRNA medicines.
Molly Nagler
Chief Learning Officer, Moderna
"The Holy Grail of adult learning is relevance to your job combined with high-quality, credible content. That's what we're striving to achieve with our AI learning programs.”
Solution
AI Academy, supplemented by Coursera: Customized, practical AI education
In order to address the challenge of providing comprehensive GenAI training, Moderna decided to make AI learning available to all 5,600+ employees, turning AI theory into practical, actionable skills that directly enhance their individual roles. The organization approached a variety of potential learning partners that could be integrated efficiently into their existing Learning Management System. By consolidating all courses on a single platform, Moderna would maintain a seamless and frictionless learning environment, essential to foeaded the adoption of Coursera, recognizing its potential to transform the GenAI training program.
"I took the course GenAI for Everyone and it absolutely left me floored. I said this is going to be part of what we do. We're going to rebuild everything that we do to democratize the power of GenAI to our people."
To enhance its AI Academy, Moderna strategically incorporated the Generative AI for Everyone course on the Coursera platform into one of its courses (designed to teach users how to build custom AI agents), ensuring that employees had access to both relevant and high-quality material. By equipping employees with this cutting-edge resource, Moderna helped prepare them to create customized AI solutions for its users.
Approach
Comprehensive AI upskilling strategy
To help ensure courses met employees’ specific needs, Moderna collaborated with Coursera’s consultancy team to curate content that went beyond off-the-shelf solutions. "The Holy Grail of adult learning is relevance to your job combined with high-quality, credible content based on research. That's what we're striving to achieve with our AI learning programs," says Molly Nagler, Moderna’s chief learning officer. Moderna further democratized learning by offering all full-time employees unrestricted access to Coursera’s GenAI courses, addressing key knowledge gaps.
Moderna focused on practical training, allowing employees to quickly apply AI skills to real-world projects. For example, using Coursera’s Course Builder tool, Moderna authored the GPT Creators – Comprehensive course. This has enabled learners to develop custom GPT tools that expedited data analysis across various areas, including scientific metrics, HR updates, market changes, or other business needs.
The program also emphasizes continuous improvement, regularly updating courses based on employee pre- and post-training surveys and emerging AI trends. "It’s the journey of taking generic knowledge and transforming it into something that’s very Moderna-specific,” says Porter. “That is what makes the learning experience come alive for our employees and helps them do something meaningful with it."
Moderna’s leadership was instrumental in driving this initiative, with executives engaging in AI learning, thought leadership, and even course creation. They also established a Generative AI Champions Team across departments to support and promote AI learning, fostering top-down and bottom-up adoption as leaders and team members alike became GenAI advocates. In response to requests for additional guidance on custom GPT creation, Moderna also launched a weekly activity where employees can collaborate with an L&D GPT to improve the quality of their custom GPTs.
Moderna introduced ethical guidelines to help ensure best practices in GenAI development and designed courses that fit seamlessly into the working day. This approach encouraged employees to stay innovative and compliant, applying their learning through daily trial and error while upholding AI diligence.
Additionally, Moderna made certain aspects of the training mandatory, including GPT Kickstart Live compulsory for GPT Enterprise License holders. To embed AI learning deeply into the company culture, Moderna integrated AI discussions into their three-day in-person onboarding program, setting expectations from the start of each employee's journey.
David Porter
AI Academy Lead, Moderna
"I took the course GenAI for Everyone and it absolutely left me floored. I said this is going to be part of what we do. We're going to rebuild everything that we do to democratize the power of GenAI to our people.”
Impact
Accelerating innovation and efficiency through AI proficiency
Learners have created more than 300 highly-customized GPTs, enabling employees across the organization to analyze and adapt to new data more quickly than ever. Having mastered skills through the DeepLearning.AI course Generative AI for Everyone, employees are now applying their knowledge of retrieval-augmented generation to build large language models using data specific to Moderna. As a result, Moderna is developing dynamic AI tools that expedite processes, reduce inaccuracies, and limit hallucinations.
While some GPTs help employees select their annual benefits, others help make regulatory communications more efficient, as well as help with additional tasks to augment employee capabilities. Another example is the development of mRNA-4157 (V940), an investigational individualized neoantigen therapy. By leveraging fully autonomous, integrated AI algorithms, Moderna designed this therapy faster than before and optimized its manufacture and delivery processes. These varied use cases highlight the benefits of adopting new AI technologies to stay ahead in a fast-moving industry.
Since the partnership's inception at the start of 2023, Moderna has seen significant improvements in employee engagement with AI learning and practical applications of AI skills with over 14,700 learning hours invested. The company achieved over 2,000 learners engaging with Coursera in the first 20 months, with the completion rate 240 percent higher than the average industry benchmark. Moderna’s AI Academy has also seen a 400 percent increase in enrollment from the previous year, and post-training assessments have recorded a 30 percent average increase in knowledge.
Porter notes that enthusiasm for the AI program is growing. "Every year, people are coming back and saying, 'Should I take AI Academy training again?' And the answer is absolutely yes. Our course content is more actionable than before, and learners can achieve even more than they could have done last year."
By encouraging employees to actively apply their learning, Moderna’s employees across all departments are already benefiting from harnessing the full capabilities of GenAI in their day-to-day lives.
Next Steps
Rapid learning in Moderna's AI-powered future
Moderna continues to push the boundaries of mRNA technology and AI integration in this rapidly advancing industry. One of the company’s 12 Mindsets is, “We obsess over learning: we don’t have to be the smartest, but we have to learn the fastest.”
“Our CEO believes in the power of compounding,” Nagler says. "He reminds us that if you learn a new skill and you’re a little bit better today, that just compounds and the benefits roll forward.”
Looking ahead, the company has ambitious plans for its learning initiatives. Moderna aims to expand its micro-credential offerings even further to address emerging industry trends. In August 2024, Moderna expanded its educational outreach by launching a new mRNA course with Coursera, mRNAs as Medicines, solidifying the organization’s commitment to advancing knowledge in the field. Moderna is committed to continuously refining and updating AI courses to meet evolving business needs.
Impact Snapshot
2,000+
learners engaged with Coursera in the first 20 months
14,700+
total learning hours
4.8/5
average Coursera rating among Moderna users