Skip to main content

Web Content Display Web Content Display

Leadership

Małopolska Centre of Biotechnology | Jagiellonian University

Web Content Display Web Content Display

Director of Małopolska Centre of Biotechnology

dr Danuta Earnshaw zd Mossakowska, prof. UJ

dr Danuta Earnshaw zd Mossakowska, prof. UJ

Director of MCB JU

 

Danuta was born and educated in in the UK and started her career on the typical path as an academic with a B.Sc. in Biochemistry from University College London, a Ph.D. from the University of Surrey and then two post-docs at Imperial College and the Institute of Cancer Research.  However, she wanted to work on something that had a tangible end-point and so she moved to work in R&D in the pharmaceutical industry.  She was fortunate enough to work on two drugs that reached the market and she also holds a number of world-wide granted patents that  have led to clinical trials for a complement modulating biological.

Research in the pharmaceutical industry is very similar to academic research; the end-point is specific i.e. a new medicine but the process of getting to the endpoint is very similar to academia.  Namely you need to identify a research project, define a research plan and cost it, apply for funding which can be just as rigorous if not more so than a grant proposal and finally execute the plan.  Team leaders manage post-docs, graduates, Ph.D, and undergraduate students. However, unlike academia, publishing is not a priority.
During 30 years of industrial research Danuta held a number of positions of increasing responsibility (post-doc, group leader and manager) culminating in department head for reagent generation and assay development both biochemical and cellular. For the last 7 years at GlaxoSmithKline, she was a senior director leading industry academic collaborations across Europe with researchers in Universities and Institutes such as CeMM Vienna, Cambridge, Edinburgh and Imperial.  This has brought her a great depth of research management experience that is invaluable for her role as director of MCB.

Since 2020,  Danuta has been dedicating a small portion of her time as a Royal Society Entrepreneur in Residence supporting academics who want to commercialise their science from the UK.

One of our underlying principles is a focus on an open culture that enables sharing of space and equipment as well as a high level of mentoring, supporting group leaders and staff in building confidence and leadership skills. This open culture is helping to support cross-group research and creating new areas of science.

Publications

ORCID

 

Research Gate

 

Google Scholar