The Tech

This month’s issue (No. 10) is now out for distribution across campus and on The Tech website (https://thetech.com/issues/146/10/pdf).

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NEWS
• Class of 2026 sent off with calls to curiosity, care (p. 1)

WEATHER
• Hot stretch of weather ahead (p. 2)

SCIENCE
• Does everyone research women’s health? (p. 3)
• Meteor causes sonic boom over East Boston (p. 3)

ENTERTAINMENT
• XKCD comics (p. 4)

NEWS — On Thursday, May 28, MIT graduates gathered on Killian Court to participate in the annual OneMIT Commencement Ceremony. This year, the Institute awarded diplomas to 1,165 undergraduates and 2,817 graduate students. The guest speaker was Lisa T. Su ’90 SM ’91 PhD ’94, the CEO of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), a major chip design firm.

The ceremony opened at Killian Court at 3 p.m. with the Class of 1976 alumni parade, MIT Corporation Chair Mark P. Gorenberg ’76’s opening remarks, and an invocation delivered by Institute Chaplain Thea Keith-Lucas. After the a ca****la group Chorollaries’s rendition of the national anthem and two school songs “In Praise of MIT” and “Take Me Back to Tech,” 2026 Commencement speaker Su arrived on stage.

Overall, the AMD CEO advised graduates to pursue the hardest problems and collectively use AI responsibly. Reflecting on her time at MIT, from taking introductory circuits and electronics to repeating countless fabrication experiments during her PhD, Su appreciated how the Institute taught her to solve difficult problems and think like an engineer.

“Run toward the hardest [problems]. And trust your engineer’s instinct. That is how you make your luck,” she concluded.

Click on the link in The Tech’s bio to learn more.

Vivian Hir ’25 and Geoffrey Enwere ’26 have the story.
Photo courtesy of Gretchen Ertl.

This week’s issue (No. 9) is now out for distribution across campus and on The Tech website (https://thetech.com/issues/146/9/pdf).

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NEWS
• Ravyn Lenae performs at MIT for SpringFest 2026 (p. 1)

WEATHER
• Cool and unsettled weather for this year’s commencement (p. 2)

CAMPUS LIFE
• Senior Side Notes: On luck (p. 3)
• Frosh Files: What I did with my di**le this year (p. 3)
• I volunteered for a year (p. 8)
• Jojo’s Bizarre Musings: Freshman year: On falling down, again and again (p. 9)

SENIOR REFLECTIONS
• The turning point of my college career (p. 4)
• Getting dumber, in a good way (p. 5)
• On exiting (p. 5)
• Learning what it means to be an “editor” (p. 6)
• Observing the magic (p. 7)
• A special chapter of my life (p. 7)

SCIENCE
• Richard Sutton talks vision for superintelligence in Dertouzos Lecture on May 13 (p. 10)
• Residents of predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods are about four times more likely to get hit by a car while walking or biking in Boston (p. 11)
• Zachary Abel on finding the factorial of 1/2 (p. 12)
• From cell biology to tessellations (p. 13)

SENIOR REFLECTIONS — The Tech’s V146 Senior Editors look back on their experiences in college journalism and say their final farewells to the paper as part of this week’s special Commencement Issue. Swipe to read takeaways from Claire Mao ’26, Alex Tang ’26, Vivian Hir G, Alor Sahoo ’26, Sabine Chu ’26, and Geoffrey Enwere ’26.

Click on the link in ’s bio to learn more.

Photos courtesy of Levy Le ’29.

This week’s issue (No. 8) is now out for distribution across campus and on The Tech website (https://thetech.com/issues/146/8/pdf).

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NEWS
• Gunman fires 60 rounds on Memorial Drive (p. 1)
• MIT Mock Trial advances to Nationals for the first time (p. 1, 2)
• MIT Canvas goes down after Instructure breach (p. 1, 2)

WEATHER
• A beautiful weekend and very warm week ahead (p. 2)

CAMPUS LIFE
• Is life an optimization problem? (p. 3)
• Why MIT should preserve the tutorial style in humanities classes (p. 3)
• From non-runner to marathon runner (p. 4)

ARTS
• Award-winning author Celeste Ng discusses ‘Everything I Never Told You’ at MIT (p. 5)

SCIENCE
• From MIT to Veritasium (p. 6)
• The Marble Center celebrates its 10th anniversary, showcases success stories behind translating experiments to clinical products (p. 6, 8)

OPINION
• Why MIT needs to gradually and responsibly train its future doctors in the AI era (p. 7)

NEWS — At 1:30 p.m. on Monday, May 11, less than a mile away from campus on Memorial Drive, a gunman sprayed nearly 60 rounds into traffic with a semiautomatic rifle, Middlesex County District Attorney Marian Ryan said at a press conference.

The shooting occurred at the intersection of River Street and Memorial Drive. Two drivers were shot and were rushed to Boston hospitals with life-threatening injuries. The gunman Tyler Brown is in custody.

The gunman was previously involved in a 2020 shooting with police officers in South End and was released from prison.

Both Cambridge and Massachusetts State Police responded to the scene, and Ryan said that it was the combined effort of a civilian and a State trooper that took down the gunman.

“[The] trooper and civilian rather than going [away] went towards the suspect with their weapons to end the situation,” Ryan said. “Both the civilian and the trooper fired their weapons, and the suspect was struck multiple times.”

“What happened today cannot stand,” he added.

Click on the link in ’s bio to learn more.

Samuel Yuan ’29 has the story.
Photo courtesy of Kai De Leon DeJesus.

NEWS — A three-way tie. Two more spots for Nationals.

Going into the awards ceremony at the Opening Round Championship Series (ORCS) Tournament in New Rochelle, N.Y., the MIT A Mock Trial team was “full blind,” with no knowledge of their win/loss ratio. Their crucial final round was against the University of Maryland (UMD) — one of the best teams in the country — and would decide if they qualified for the National Championship Tournament.

For Kaitlin Yeoh ’28, time seemed to slow down as the first bid was announced.

It was MIT.

The eight-person team immediately leapt to their feet in excitement, screaming and hugging each other as they celebrated a long-awaited accomplishment.

“I was so happy. This year has truly felt like the culmination of all 11 years of hard work that members before us put into this program,” Yeoh said. “It’s such a storybook ending.”

Click on the link in ’s bio to learn more.

Grace Zhang ’28 has the story.
Photo courtesy of MIT Mock Trial.

CAMPUS LIFE — When people ask me when I started running, they are often surprised to learn that I began during my freshman year at MIT.

Growing up, I hated running. The most I ran was 1.5 miles for my high school PE class. Although my mile time was above average, I found running to be an awfully boring, exhausting, and painful activity. I never understood why someone would enjoy running. I mean, what joy could come from physical exertion?

It wasn’t until my first year of undergrad that I became interested in running. During winter break, I reflected upon my relatively sedentary first semester. I decided to adopt a more active and healthier lifestyle for the new year. I began the year by running a mile at the local 400-meter track. I was slow, but at least I started somewhere. I continued doing short runs that were between one and two miles throughout IAP and the spring semester, but I did not have a regular running habit. What truly sparked my interest in running was an interesting conversation I had with a volunteer at the Happy Beaver Invitational, a running meet hosted by the MIT Running Club.

Click on the link in ’s bio to learn more.

Vivian Hir ’25 has the story.
Photo courtesy of Vivian Hir ’25.

BREAKING NEWS — Shortly after 4:00 p.m. on Thursday, May 7, MIT students lost access to Canvas, the platform that hosts instructional material for nearly all courses, following a breach of the website’s parent company Instructure by cybercrime group ShinyHunters.

MIT is among thousands of universities that use Canvas as their primary instructional platform and are affected by the hack.

The breach comes just as students are wrapping up their final assignments. According to the MIT Registrar, no assignment may fall due after May 8 for subjects with final exams. It also comes just before MIT’s final exams period, which is from May 15 to 20.

MIT’s Information and Systems Technology (IS&T) is aware of the data breach and has issued an announcement on its website. The notice reads, “MIT is actively monitoring the situation and coordinating with the vendor as they work to restore service. This issue originates with the vendor environment and is not the result of an issue within MIT’s local systems.”

Click on the link in ’s bio to learn more.

Samuel Yuan ’29 and Grace Zhang ’28 have the story.
Photo courtesy of The Tech News Staff.

Last week’s issue (No. 7) has been out for distribution across campus and on The Tech website (https://thetech.com/issues/146/7/pdf).

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NEWS
• Green Building Tetris hack returns after 10 years (p. 1, 3)
• MIT Spokes will bike 75 days to teach in rural towns (p. 1, 3)
• MIT List Visual Arts Center celebrates 40 years (p. 1, 2)
• BRIEF: MIT announces Co-op Planning Committee (p. 2)
• BRIEF: New Kendall/MIT station entrance opens (p. 3)
• 1,016 admitted students attend CPW 2026 (p. 12)

WEATHER
• Cool and rainy weekend before nice weather returns next week (p. 2)

CAMPUS LIFE
• An ode to the SAB (p. 4)
• For the love of the game (p. 5)
• Call a boomer (p. 6)
• An unrigorous investigation into food chain consistency (p. 6)

ARTS
• Bestselling author Patrick Radden Keefe presents ‘London Falling’ at WBUR CitySpace (p. 7)
• Bob Odenkirk and Derek Kolstad on ‘Normal’ (p. 8)
• A collage of Baroque dances and celebrations (p. 8)

SCIENCE
• A brighter future for the people of Africa: MIT Africa Innovate Conference pushes new plans for uplifting the African continent (p. 9)
• Sleeping cancer cells hijack the wound healing pathway to wake up (p. 10)