Welcome to Future Fest: “The Future Starts Here”

Good afternoon! A very warm welcome to MIT Future Fest!

I see many faces here from MIT. But I also see lots of faces from communities we touch beyond our campus: Scientists. Inventors. Designers. Artists. Investors and entrepreneurs. Teachers and students. Elected officials and community volunteers. Our neighbors and our friends.

And that is completely in the spirit of MIT Future Fest – because this five-day celebration of thinking and making and doing is all about opening our doors and welcoming the world in.

This is the first time MIT has opened its doors in quite this way, on this scale – and we hope it can become an annual tradition.

So let me take a moment to acknowledge the key people and organizations whose support and enthusiasm brought this wonderful idea to life:

• To start with: We’re indebted to Michael John Gorman, and his team at the MIT Museum, for producing and curating the festival hand-in-hand with MIT Technology Review and Morningside Academy for Design
• Once they developed the vision, they recruited supporters from inside and outside MIT, ranging from the Office of the Provost and each MIT school and college to the outstanding companies and organizations that stepped up to support MIT Future Fest and the Cambridge Science Carnival.
• Finally, want to acknowledge all the brilliant individuals who are speaking performing exhibiting their work or otherwise participating in MIT Future Fest. It’s an honor for MIT to able to share your talent with the world.

We’re here to take part in something that’s both deeply familiar and completely new:

• Nothing could be more familiar than the people of this community exploring new territory and solving problems, together.
• Yet today gathering under the amazing umbrella of MIT Future Fest, for this inaugural celebration, it all feels new.

Now, I’m sure everyone here knows that MIT is a community of people with what you might call unusually intense interests.

We feel a drive to explore, understand, solve, invent, design and make in service to society that you don’t find many other places.

Sometimes we call that phenomenon “curiosity on a mission.” And that spirit feels completely at home here in Massachusetts. (You’ll hear more on this from Governor Healey in a minute.) Our home state is a place where curiosity changes everything!

I’m leaning into curiosity because I think it’s the very best way to approach the future.

Now at any point in history, “the future” can seem bursting with possibility or heavy with uncertainty and risk or both. (The “future of AI” feels like that, for all of us, I think.)

We can race forward to seize the opportunities or we can shrink back from the risks.

Or we can explore both possible paths with the sensitive antennae of curiosity, and learn together as we go.

One of MIT’s former presidents, the legendary Paul Gray, coined a phrase to describe what we do here. Playfully, but seriously, he called it “Inventing the future.”

In a world as complex and interconnected as ours if we aim to “invent the future” we need all the help we can get! That’s why it’s so important to have all of you join us over these five days in exploration, conversation and curiosity.

To get things started, in a few minutes we’ll hear from three incredible innovators, all of them very well known in this ecosystem – and each one a global leader in their respective field:

• First: Noubar Afeyan, the founder and CEO of Flagship Pioneering, which develops and fosters the success of companies that “make the impossible possible” – including Moderna.
• Second is Sangeeta Bhatia, an MIT professor of Health Sciences and Technology and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Among her many other titles, she’s director of the Marble Center for Cancer Nanomedicine at the Koch Institute, and a Howard Huges Medical Institute Investigator. Sangeeta is also a prolific serial entrepreneur.
• And third is Bob Mumgaard, CEO and co-founder of Commonwealth Fusion Systems, the world’s largest commercial fusion energy company.

Here’s where I get to say how proud we are that all three are MIT alums!

Leading this panel conversation will be another star in the Commonwealth’s innovation ecosystem, Massachusetts Secretary of Economic Development, Eric Paley.

Eric joined Governor Healey’s administration about a year ago, bringing with him the entrepreneurial imagination and on-the-ground wisdom gained from more than 25 years as a founder and leading venture capitalist. We are very fortunate to have him guiding the state’s work to foster our innovation economy.

Today, he’ll lead a conversation about how public, private, and educational institutions can work together to sustain talent pipelines turn discovery into impact and build the future.

But before we get to this intriguing panel, I’m delighted that we’ll have a chance to hear from Governor Healey herself.

Maura Healey became Governor just a few days after I started my current role at MIT – and she has built a standout record in many domains.

For today, I’ll just emphasize her remarkable work to improve the state’s competitiveness and its ability to stay ahead of the curve on innovation – not only in Greater Boston, but for the benefit of communities across the state.

She’s keenly aware of the role of science and technology in powering the state's economy. And we could not ask for a more responsive, creative and energetic thought-partner in sustaining and advancing the state’s present, and its future, as an innovation powerhouse.

So it may not surprise you that from the moment we mentioned it, she was extraordinarily enthusiastic about MIT Future Fest. We’re honored to have her with us on campus today, not once but twice: At this kick-off event, and later for the opening of the new Oceans exhibit at the MIT Museum.

So please join me now in a very warm welcome to the Governor of the Commonwealth, Maura Healey.

Thank you, Secretary Paley, for leading this fascinating discussion.

And many thanks also to your inspiring panelists – truly the best of MIT!

The energy here today is fantastic – and the program for the rest of MIT Future Fest promises much more! Honestly, the range and quality of the talks, exhibitions and performances is stunning: A cornucopia of cool ideas, tumbling out across the campus from clean energy to quantum to the future of manufacturing as well as deep questions around the role of AI in education and human flourishing.

And of course, it will wrap up on Sunday with all the delights of the Cambridge Science Carnival 12-to-4, in the Kendall/MIT Open Space.

The initial idea for MIT Future Fest came from the director of the MIT Museum, Michael John Gorman.

But if you ask him who really made this all possible the person who threw herself into curating the program, marshalling the resources, and enlisting the enthusiasm of so many brilliant people and he will instantly say another name: Keelin Caldwell, the Museum’s Director of Engagement and Public Programs. So as we step out into the festival Keelin made for us please join me in offering her a special round of applause.

I feel as if I’m greeting you at the front door of a great adventure. So I wish you all the very best for the festival – and I hope can meet again for MIT Future Fest next year!