MIT Urges Grads to Tackle Hard Problems

Run toward the hardest problems, MIT tells Class of 2026. This afternoon, at Killian Court, MIT’s OneMIT ceremony featured Lisa Su, chair and CEO of AMD, delivering a blunt charter for a new generation of engineers: aim at the problems that scare the campus but shape the world.

Su, who earned three MIT degrees in electrical engineering and helped catalyze MIT.nano’s prominence, framed the moment as a bridge from classroom rigor to real projects with outsized impact. Building 12, home to MIT.nano, carries her name since 2022, a reminder of how closely MIT’s ecosystem and industry leadership are intertwined. Su told graduates that hard problems teach you what you’re capable of, a line that captured the balance MIT has long preached: deep mastery paired with practical problem solving.

The quotes from Su underscored a philosophy that resonates beyond the stage. “Run toward the hardest problems,” she urged, pairing the call with a caution that the world does not merely need people who know how to wield powerful tools. It needs people who know what to use them for, she said, with a sense of purpose, judgment, and courage. The message landed at a time when MIT continues to emphasize hands-on innovation alongside ethical leadership, a combination that has historically propelled students into leadership roles in tech and industry.

OneMIT is MIT’s institute-wide celebration, layering a single stage with a spectrum of ceremonies across schools and disciplines. The day’s format reflects MIT’s belief that breakthrough work happens through cross-cutting collaboration, not in silos. In addition to Su’s remarks, the Commencement week historically features separate rites for undergraduates, graduates, and members of MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, all funneling into a shared moment of accountability to the world these graduates will help shape.

From a robotics and automation vantage point, Su’s insistence on purpose over prowess aligns with a practical shift in tech development. The directive to “lead purposeful lives” and deploy tools with clear intent speaks to the engineering realities that operators and investors watch closely: products must perform reliably, safely, and at scale. Lab prototypes can dazzle, but production realities, including qualification, safety, maintenance, and cost, determine whether an idea becomes a sustainable system. The talk, in effect, reframes what counts as a successful outcome for engineers who bridge theory and field deployment.

Practitioner insight one is that pushing toward hard problems elevates the importance of cross-disciplinary teams. In robotics and AI, breakthroughs that sit at the intersection of hardware, software, and human factors rarely realize their value without collaboration across engineering disciplines and product teams. Practitioner insight two is that the call for purposeful use raises the stakes for ethical design and governance, which will shape funding, regulatory review, and user acceptance. Insight three emphasizes that real deployments demand a path from prototype to production, including reliability engineering, safety verification, and supply chain resilience. Insight four notes the leadership dimension; graduates will increasingly be asked to steer projects through ambiguity, balancing speed, risk, and societal impact as they move from lab benches to the real world.

As MIT’s newest grads step into a tech landscape that still prizes speed and invention, Su’s words offer a blunt compass: the most powerful tools are only as good as the aims they serve, and the next wave of robotics and intelligent systems will hinge on engineers who can reason, justify, and endure the long arc from concept to consequence.