OneMIT Commencement Ceremony

ALUMNI PARADE
Class of 1975

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
Hank Green
Science communicator, video creator, and entrepreneur

SALUTE FROM THE GRADUATE STUDENTS
Teddy Clark Warner
President, Graduate Student Council, 2024–2025

SALUTE FROM THE UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS
Megha M. Vemuri
President, Class of 2025

CHARGE TO THE GRADUATES
Sally Kornbluth
President

WELCOME INTO THE MIT ALUMNI ASSOCIATION
Natalie Lorenz Anderson ’84
President, MIT Alumni Association 

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

RECESSIONAL
School Song, The Chorallaries of MIT
 

Live StreamText captioning: bit.ly/streamtext-captioning

Hank Green is a science communicator, prolific digital content creator, and entrepreneur whose ethos is “make things, learn stuff.” Since the 1990s, Green has launched, built, and sustained a wide-ranging variety of projects, many featuring STEM-related topics, with his signature enthusiasm for the natural world and the human experience. The Washington Post called Green “one of America's most popular science teachers.”

In 2012, Green and his brother, author John Green, founded the educational media company Complexly, whose content is used in high schools across the US. The company continues to develop content within its large number of YouTube channels, including SciShow, which investigates everything from the deepest hole on Earth to the weirdest kinds of lightning, and Crash Course, which features videos that ask questions like, “Where did democracy come from?” and “Why do we study art?” On his own platforms, Green takes on virtually any topic under the sun, including the weird science of tattoos and how ferrofluid speakers work.

Green has been a YouTube celebrity since 2007, when he and his brother started a video blog called Vlogbrothers that continues to this day. That same year, the Green brothers founded The Project for Awesome, a charity project that has raised more than $10M for charities to date. Green has also launched platforms to help support other content creators, including VidCon in 2010, the world’s largest gathering that celebrates the community, craft, and industry of online video (acquired by Viacom in 2018), and the crowdfunding platform Subbable, which was later acquired by Patreon.

Green is also a podcaster, singer/songwriter, stand-up comedian, and novelist. His latest book is the New York Times best-selling A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor, the sequel in a pair of novels that grapple with the implications of overnight fame, internet culture, and reality-shifting discoveries. He lives in Montana with his wife and son.

Since becoming MIT’s 18th president in January 2023, Sally Kornbluth has rallied the community to help solve the great challenges of our time. Working closely with Chief Innovation and Strategy Officer Anantha Chandrakasan and Provost Cindy Barnhart, she has launched a series of initiatives inspired by the achievements and aspirations of Institute faculty. She created the Climate Project at MIT with the aim of driving technological, behavioral and policy solutions designed to help change the expected trajectory of global climate outcomes. In 2024, she introduced the MIT Human Insight Collaborative (MITHIC) to inspire new 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), designed 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 to explore how gen AI can spawn transformative solutions for real-world challenges and help ensure that its societal impact is broadly beneficial. She has also championed the Institute’s commitment to freedom of expression, while making sure everyone remains free to do their best work – and that the great work of MIT continues.

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, she received a scholarship to attend Cambridge University, where she earned a BA in genetics in 1984. In 1989, Kornbluth received her PhD in molecular oncology from Rockefeller University, and then completed postdoctoral training at the University of California, San Diego. She joined Duke University in 1994 as an assistant professor of pharmacology and cancer biology, and by 2005 had risen to full professor. She stepped into administration the following year as vice dean for basic science at the Duke School of Medicine, a post she held until she became provost in 2014.

In her research, Kornbluth focused on processes that are key to understanding cancer as well as various degenerative disorders. She has published extensively on how cancer cells evade apoptosis and how metabolism regulates the cell death process. Among other honors, she is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

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.

BROADCAST VIEWING
Indoor viewing will be available in select rooms across campus, including Buildings 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, W20, 32, and 45, as well as Rooms 6-120, 10-250, 26-100, 35-225, Wong Auditorium, Kresge Auditorium, MIT Welcome Center, and Kendall/MIT Open Space.

For a complete list of indoor viewing locations, visit the indoor viewing locations 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
Lost and found items will be available at the information tents and at MIT Police thereafter.

MAPS
Print copies of campus and shuttle maps are available at the information tents. You can also view them online:
• MIT campus map
• Commencement and MIT Tech shuttle routes map

A map of Killian Court for the OneMIT Ceremony is below.

SOCIAL MEDIA
Use #MIT2025 in your social media posts and tag us!
Instagram: @mit, @mitalumni, @mitcommencement
Facebook: MIT News, MIT Alumni Association
X: @MIT, @MITStudents, @MIT_alumni

Go to MIT’s social media hub to experience the day through MIT social media accounts.

WEBCAST, VIDEO, AND CAPTIONING
MIT Video Productions provides a live webcast of the OneMIT Commencement Ceremony, with a recording available for on-demand viewing after the event.

Live StreamText captioning will be available for the OneMIT Ceremony via personal mobile devices: bit.ly/streamtext-captioning

The Academic Procession at the OneMIT Ceremony is 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—follows the Chief Marshal to process and recess.

A PDF of the OneMIT Ceremony program will be available Commencement week, as will the 2025 name book.