One perspective on a transition from academic faculty to Biotech

About the Speaker

Courtney Crane is Senior Vice President of Translational Medicine and Research at Mozart Therapeutics, a Seattle-area biotech. She joined the company at its founding in 2020 to build a research team focused on turning academic discoveries into clinical therapies for autoimmune disease, and she added leadership of a translational medicine department when Mozart entered the clinic in 2024.

Before Mozart, Courtney spent a decade leading an academic research program, first at the University of California, San Francisco, and later at the University of Washington and Seattle Children’s Research Institute. There she was an Associate Professor in the Department of Neurological Surgery and an affiliate member of the Human Biology Division at the Fred Hutch Cancer Center. Her work examined the immune system’s dysfunction across a range of diseases and led to a novel cell therapy platform, developed with a large pharmaceutical partner that later licensed the technology.

Courtney completed a postdoctoral fellowship at UCSF and earned her PhD in Immunology from the University of Virginia.

About the Bioscience Careers Seminar Series

The Bioscience Careers Seminar Series is back by popular demand! Now led by the PhD Ambassadors in collaboration with the Office of Research and Graduate Education and Life Science Washington, the series will allow graduate students to explore careers and build professional connections with biotech and pharmaceutical companies within Washington state. PhD training prepares you for many different jobs, both inside and outside the academy. During this year’s Bioscience Careers Seminar Series, we’ll highlight experiences of scientists who’ve transitioned from their PhD to various careers in one of our local companies.

* To encourage networking and community building, all sessions will be held in person at the UW SLU campus; recordings will be posted, at a later date, on the RGE website*