Commencement 2025 celebrated the 1,158 undergraduates who earned MIT diplomas this year. In this Instagram post, five of them — from Texas, Wisconsin, Barbados, Michigan, and Georgia — speak about what’s next for them.

MIT’s Initiative for New Manufacturing aims to ignite job creation and reinfuse U.S. industrial production with leading-edge technologies. President Sally Kornbluth says: “Helping America build a future of new manufacturing is a perfect job for MIT.”

A new study finds U.S. universities drive regional innovation, yielding companies and patents. They’re key to “attracting inventors into their regions, training them at the forefront of science, and then contributing to the economy,” Fiona Murray says.

Engineers have developed a membrane that separates crude oil components by molecular size, potentially reducing energy use by 90%. Zachary Smith says: “Instead of boiling mixtures to purify them, why not separate components based on shape and size?”

In a world without MIT, radar wouldn’t have been available to help win World War II. We might not have email, CT scans, time-release drugs, photolithography, or GPS. And we’d lose over 30,000 companies, employing millions of people. Can you imagine?

​Since its founding, MIT has been key to helping American science and innovation lead the world. Discoveries that begin here generate jobs and power the economy — and what we create today builds a better tomorrow for all of us.