OneMIT Commencement Ceremony

ALUMNI PARADE
Class of 1976

PROCESSIONAL
Killian Court Brass Ensemble
conducted by Kenneth Amis

OPENING REMARKS
Mark P. Gorenberg ’76
Chair, MIT Corporation

INVOCATION
Thea Keith-Lucas
Chaplain to the Institute

NATIONAL ANTHEM
The Chorallaries of MIT

COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS
Lisa T. Su ’90 SM ’91 PhD ’94
Chair and Chief Executive Officer, Advanced Micro Devices

SALUTE FROM THE GRADUATE STUDENTS
Teddy Clark Warner
President, Graduate Student Council, 2024–2026

SALUTE FROM THE UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS
Heba Hussein
President, Class of 2026

CHARGE TO THE GRADUATES
Sally Kornbluth
President

WELCOME INTO THE MIT ALUMNI ASSOCIATION AND TURNING OF THE CLASS RING
Stephen P. DeFalco ’83 SM ’88
President, MIT Alumni Association 

CLOSING REMARKS
Mark P. Gorenberg ’76
Chair, MIT Corporation

RECESSIONAL
School Song, The Chorallaries of MIT

As chair and chief executive officer at Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Dr. Lisa T. Su ’90 SM ’91 PhD ’94 has led the company’s transformation into the industry’s high-performance and adaptive computing leader, helping solve the world's most important challenges by delivering the next generation of AI and computing solutions.

Prior to serving as chair and CEO, she was the chief operating officer responsible for integrating AMD’s business units, sales, global operations, and infrastructure enablement teams into a single market-facing organization responsible for all aspects of product strategy and execution. Su joined AMD in January 2012 as senior vice president and general manager, Global Business Units, and was responsible for driving end-to-end business execution of AMD products and solutions.

Before joining AMD, Su served as senior vice president and general manager, Networking and Multimedia at Freescale Semiconductor, Inc. and was responsible for global strategy, marketing, and engineering for the company’s embedded communications and applications processor business. Su joined Freescale in 2007 as chief technology officer, where she led the company’s technology roadmap and research and development efforts.

Su spent the previous 13 years at IBM in various engineering and business leadership positions, including vice president of the Semiconductor Research and Development Center, responsible for the strategic direction of IBM’s silicon technologies, joint development alliances, and semiconductor R&D operations. Prior to IBM, she was a member of the technical staff at Texas Instruments Inc. in the Semiconductor Process and Device Center from 1994 to 1995.

Su is TIME's 2024 CEO of the Year and has been recognized as one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People, Barron's World's Best CEOs, and Fortune's Most Powerful People in Business. She received the 2024 Bower Award for Business Leadership and the Distinguished Leadership Award from the Committee for Economic Development (CED). Su is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering. She is a recipient of the Global Semiconductor Association’s Dr. Morris Chang Exemplary Leadership Award and the Grace Hopper Technical Leadership Abie Award. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) recognized her with its highest semiconductor honor, the Robert N. Noyce Medal. Su is vice chair of the board of directors for the Semiconductor Industry Association.

Since becoming MIT’s 18th president in January 2023, Sally Kornbluth has rallied the community to help solve the great challenges of our time through a suite of initiatives that encourage faculty to “go big” with their most daring ideas, often through new collaborations across disciplines and institutions.

She created the Climate Project at MIT with the aim of driving technological, behavioral, and policy solutions. In 2024, she introduced the MIT Human Insight Collaborative (MITHIC) to spark collaborations between MIT faculty in the arts, humanities, and social sciences and colleagues in other disciplines. And she led the launch of the MIT Health and Life Sciences Collaborative (MIT HEALS), which aims to accelerate and deliver solutions, at scale, to society’s most urgent, intractable health challenges.

In 2025, Kornbluth introduced the MIT Generative AI Impact Consortium (MGAIC, called “magic”) to explore how generative AI can spawn transformative solutions to real-world challenges in ways that are broadly beneficial to society. She also launched the MIT Initiative for New Manufacturing, an ambitious effort to rebuild manufacturing strength to benefit communities of every size. And in December of that year, she launched QMIT (“kew-mitt”) to foster new ways of applying quantum breakthroughs to consequential challenges in science, technology, industry, and national security.

Throughout her term as president, she has also championed the Institute’s commitment to freedom of expression, while making sure everyone remains free to do their best work.

A native of Fair Lawn, New Jersey, Kornbluth graduated from Williams College in 1982 with a BA in political science. Making a sharp pivot toward biology, in 1984, she earned a BA in genetics from Cambridge University, and in 1989, received her PhD in molecular oncology from Rockefeller University. She joined Duke University in 1994 as an assistant professor and became a full professor in 2005, having published extensively on how cancer cells evade programmed cell death and how metabolism regulates the cell death process. The next year, she became vice dean for basic science at the Duke School of Medicine, a post she held until she became provost in 2014.

A member of the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Inventors, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in 2025, she received an honorary doctorate from Baylor College of Medicine.

Kornbluth lives in Gray House with her husband, Daniel Lew, a professor in MIT’s Department of Biology. They have two grown children.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND MUSICIANS
Acknowledgments and the full list of musicians are available on the acknowledgments page.

DIGITAL DIPLOMAS
All graduating students are eligible to receive a digital diploma at no cost. To get started, visit the Registrar's site, download the Blockcerts Wallet app, and add MIT as an issuer to ensure you'll receive your digital diploma as soon as it's available.

HISTORY AND SYMBOLISM
Learn about the history and symbolism behind MIT ceremonies—including academic regalia, the ceremonial mace, the shepherd's staff, and the MIT seal—on the History and Symbolism page. 

LOST AND FOUND
Any valuable items found at ceremonies (e.g., phones, laptops) will be held by the MIT Police. All other found items will be available in 7-121.

RECEPTIONS
To view the full list of receptions, please visit: bit.ly/mit-receptions

SOCIAL MEDIA
Use #MIT2026 in your social media posts and tag us!
Instagram: @mit, @mitalumni, @mitcommencement
Facebook: MIT News, MIT Alumni Association
X: @MIT, @MITStudents, @MIT_alumni

Visit MIT’s social media hub for additional MIT social media accounts.

The Academic Procession at the OneMIT Ceremony was led by the Chief Marshal, President of the MIT Alumni Association. The stage assembly—comprising our honored guest speaker, MIT senior leaders, members of the MIT Corporation (MIT’s trustees) and Faculty, the Chaplain to the Institute, and the student speakers—followed the Chief Marshal to process and recess.

OneMIT Commencement Ceremony Program (PDF)

Class of 2026 name book