At a spirited Commencement ceremony, the Class of 2026 is urged to “run toward the hardest problems”

After years of study and instruction, MIT’s Class of 2026 received one last piece of guidance this afternoon en route to picking up their diplomas and starting the next chapter of their lives.“Run toward the hardest problems,” said Lisa Su ’90, SM ’91, PhD ’94, the chair and CEO of semiconductor powerhouse Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and the featured Commencement speaker at today’s OneMIT ceremony. “Hard problems really teach you what you’re capable of.”Su’s career as one of the world’s leading technology executives has long been intertwined with MIT. She holds three degrees in electrical engineering from the Institute, along with another distinction: Building 12, home of the MIT.nano facility, was named after her in 2022. A central theme of Su’s address involved learning by taking on difficult challenges. At MIT, as she put it, she acquired “not the confidence that I would always know the answer, but the confidence that even when I didn’t know the answer, I could figure it out.”

Speaking before a large and appreciative audience in MIT’s Killian Court, Su also urged MIT’s new class of graduates to lead purposeful lives, with a sense of the greater good and an eye toward addressing societal challenges. “The world does not just need people who know how to use powerful tools,” Su said. “It needs people who know what to use them for. People with a sense of purpose. Judgment. Courage.”Science: Curiosity on a MissionThe OneMIT ceremony is an Institute-wide Commencement event with a featured speaker and other traditional elements. MIT’s Commencement week also includes specific ceremonies in which undergraduates, and graduate students in the Institute’s five schools and the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, walk across stage to receive their diplomas. After Su spoke, MIT President Sally A. Kornbluth delivered a charge to the graduates, discussing the Institute’s core values, especially the ideas of excellence and curiosity. She also emphasized MIT’s role in making advances that benefit the nation and society at large, from medicine to energy, agriculture, and other areas of need.