Noubar Afeyan Address to the Class of 2024
thank you thank you thank you Mark for that generous but somewhat embarrassing introduction president cornbluth trustees and faculty students of and families alumni and members of this remarkable community of Scholars and solvers it's a special honor to be with you today graduates I once sat where you now sit brimming with excitement and the sense of accomplishment that comes with a hardw MIT diploma congratulations to all of you families as the father of two MIT alums talene and Lena I know firsthand the pride and emotion you feel today faculty members as a senior lecturer here for 16 years I saw up close how well you prepare these graduates for what lies ahead and fellow trustees it is a great privilege to serve alongside you I spent my childhood in Beirut Lebanon three generations of my proud Armenian family shared an apartment on the ninth floor of our building the window in the bedroom I shared with my great aunt looked out over the Red talled Roofs of Roman Ottoman and Byzantine buildings and Beyond to the Mediterranean Sea when Civil War erupted in 1975 and the government imposed strict curfews the state broadcaster often shifted from airing 3 hours of TV a day to offering in round thee clock programming of mostly American television shows a diversion for my brothers and me when we were forced to stay inside one show in particular had me captivated just hearing the theme song would set my heart racing perhaps you know it too [Music] [Applause] [Music] that's right Mission Impossible even if you never saw the TV show you likely know the movies with Tom Cruz as agent Ethan Hunt the encoded self-destructing message to the agents always began the same way your mission should you choose to accept it no matter how possible develop a safe and effective vaccine that could save lives restart the economy and do so in less than a year oh and while you're at it get a billion doses manufactured distribute them around the world and get them into the arms of people it was clear that if we accepted this challenge it would take everything we had we would have to show 20 slow 20 ongoing drug development projects and focus on solving covid we embraced this Mission and I'm so proud that my colleague and friend Professor Langer is here he was a main driver of this as well just 48 hours after M madna obtained the sequence for the SARS coov 2 Spike protein we deployed our mRNA technology to produce a potent vaccine less than two months later we enrolled the first patient in a clinical trial and on November 16th the vaccine was determined to be 94.5% effective against covid-19 by some estimates mad's vaccine saved over 2 million lives during the pandemic how did we do it well that's another speech for another day but what I do want to talk about is what it takes to accept your own impossible missions and why you as graduates of MIT are uniquely prepared to do so uniquely prepared and also obligated at a time when the world is beset by crisis your mission is nothing less than to salvage what seems lost reverse what seems inevitable and save the planet and just like the agents in the movies you need to accept the mission even if it seems impossible I know the odds don't appear to be in your favor but this age of poly crisis is also a moment of poly opportunity fueled by artificial intelligence machine learning Quantum Computing and other modern technologies that are changing the world faster than people believe is possible now you are uniquely equipped to turn science fiction into science reality with the right mindsets Mission Impossible can become mission improbable as you overcome obstacles and seemingly long odds by imagining and innovating your way to novel Solutions so how do you go about doing that how do you become the agents the world needs you to be starting from today well you already have a head start quite a significant one you graduate today from MIT and that says volumes about your knowledge Talent Vision passion and perseverance all essential attributes of the elite 21st Century agent oh and I forgot to mention our relaxed uncompetitive nature our outstanding social skills and the overall coolness that characterizes each and every MIT grad but more seriously you are trained in science mathematics engineering and Technology fields that when properly harnessed and supported can be deployed against almost any seemingly impossible challenge you may not realize that yet but your MIT education has given you a superpower like x-ray vision that lets you see through the illusion of impossibility and surface the blueprints for Solutions and as of today you even have a secret decoder ring better known as The Brass rat mit's history underscores these special powers the telephone digital circuits radar email internet the Human Genome Project controlled drug delivery magnetic confinement Fusion Energy artificial intelligence and all it all that is enabling these and many more breakthroughs emerged from the work of extraordinary change agents tied to MIT now let me ask you a question aside from MIT what do such agents have in common what equips them to accomplish seemingly impossible missions I'd argue they do three things that make leaps possible they imagine they innovate and they immigrate and now it's your turn start by unleashing your imagination people often see imagination as the exclusive province of the Arts of movie making of literature painting I think that's nonsense imagination to my mind is the foundational building block of breakthrough science I'm not making an argument against reason let alone at MIT reason has a role to play but in accomplishing impossible missions it's the servant not the master you can't expect reasoning to do the work of imagination at its best scientific research is a profoundly creative Endeavor you have mastered proofs problem sets and design projects but in the words of mathematician and author Lewis Carroll imagination is the only weapon in the war with reality to the great Irish writer George Bernard Shaw its role is even more fundamental as he put it imagination is the beginning of creation you imagine what you desire you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will it is also your turn to innovate think of innovation as imagination in action or perhaps men's and manners or mind in hand but I hear that line is already taken MIT did not prepare you to shy away from the unknown quite the contrary you are now prepared to leap for the Stars sometimes quite literally just ask to more than 40 NASA astronauts with MIT degrees leaps often involve unreasonable or even seemingly crazy ideas ordinary Innovations are often judged by how reasonable the idea is and an extension of what already exists and how reasonable the purpose the person proposing it is but ask yourself one central question why do we expect extraordinary results from reasonable people doing reasonable things as you've probably guessed by now I'm utterly unreasonable and an eternal optimist as a lifelong entrepreneur and innovator I have to be but I've always practiced a special kind of optimism I call it paranoid optimism this means toggling back and forth between extreme optimism and deep-seated doubt the the kind of paranoid optimism needed to make scientific or technological leaps often starts with an Act of Faith by that I mean belief without facts the very definition of Faith now I know faith is generally associated with religion but interestingly in my experience pioneering science also starts with faith you take leaps of faith and then you do experiments and on rare occasions the experiments work converting your leap of faith into scientific reality what a thrill when that happens on your Innovation Journey Beyond optimism and Faith you will also need the courage of your convictions make no mistake you leave MIT as special agents in demand as you consider your many options I urge you to think hard about what Legacy you want to leave and to do this periodically throughout your life not every Mission your are qualified for is a mission worth accepting you are far more than technologists you are moral actors the choice to maximize solely for profits and power will in the end leave you Hollow to forget this is to fail the world and ultimately to fail yourself I know many of you here and some in the class of 20124 not with us here today are deeply troubled by the conflicts and tragedies we are with wiing as an Armenian descended from genocide survivors and co-founder of the Aurora humanitarian initiative I feel deeply the wounds of these conflicts I wish I had answers for all of us but of course I don't but I do know this having conviction should not be confused with having all the answers over my many years engaged in entrepreneurship and humanitarian philanthropy I have learned that there's enormous benefit in questioning what you you think you know listening to people who think differently and seeking Common Ground as you grapple with today as you grapple with today's hard choices and the many that lie ahead rely again on your imagination imagine the world you want to create and work backwards from there be open to the many paths that could carry you towards this goal and let the journey inform which ones will succeed now I've urged you to imagine and to innovate the last thing I want to leave you with is the need to immigrate I'll say more about what I mean by immigrate in a second but first I want to give a shout out to others who like me have left their homelands for those of you who have thank you for those of you who have immigrated here from far away or whose parents did or whose grandparents did please stand I applaud you it may often feel like a disadvantage but you will soon learn it is quite the opposite when I first arrived at MIT I worried I did not belong here I spoke with an accent I still speak with a little accent my pastime wasn't hockey or lacrosse but it was Armenian folk dance then one afternoon late in my first year here I was walking down the infinite corridor when a poster caught my eye staring back from the poster was a Native American Chief in full headdress eyes defiant fingers pointed seemingly right at me the poster read who are you calling immigrant Pilgrim I can't tell you what an impact that had on me aside from Native Americans we all at some point come from somewhere else it helped me realize that I belonged here at MIT in the United States and graduates and families you do too but here's the really interesting thing that I've learned over the years you need not be from elsewhere to immigrate if the Immigrant experience can be described as leaving familiar circumstances and being dropped into unknown territory I would argue that every one of you also arrived at a it as an immigrant no matter where you grew up and as immigrants you are all at an advantage when it comes to Impossible missions why you've left your comfort zone you've entered Uncharted Territory you've gotten you forgone the safety of the familiar yet you persist and you survive you figure out how to accomplish your mission like the lead agents immigrants are the ultimate innovators equipped to navigate obstacles to Never Say Never in fact I often describe Innovation as intellectual immigration just like those of us who immigrate from other countries innovators Pioneer new environments seeking a better future not just for themselves but also for the larger world so whether you grew up in Cambodia or in California or right here in Cambridge you can immigrate you need to keep immigrating you need to leave your comfort zone to think in new ways to acclimate to the unfamiliar and embrace uncertainty if you imagine innovate and immigrate you are destined to a life of uncertainty being surrounded by uncertainty can definitely be unnerving but it's where you need to be this is where the treasure lies it's Ground Zero for breakthroughs don't conflate uncertainty as risk or think of it as extreme risk un un certainty isn't high risk it's unknown risk it is in the essence opportunity now I began with a show I'll end with a movie the most recent Mission Impossible film released just last summer the film is a daunting reminder of all that your generation is up against complicated geopolitics climate and technological pressures and AI tools that will both simplify and complicate our world but grad ues as I look at all of you I see a large team of agents who are entirely capable of completing your missions I see agents for good agents for change MIT has prepared you to tackle impossible missions to harness the future and bend it towards the light my wish for you my fervent hope is that you not only choose to accept impossible missions but you embrace them welcome long Gods Embrace uncertainty and lead with imagination approach the unknown with the Courage the confidence and the Curiosity of an immigrant with paranoia and optimism and always remember the strength of working in teams show the world why Mission Impossible teams inevitably short hands for MIT graduates set forth on your impossible missions accept them embrace them the world needs you and it's your turn to star in the action adventure called your life thank you
2024-06-03 12:02
