Naming Celebration for L. Rafael Reif Innovation Corridor
Tuesday, June 17, 2025
As prepared for delivery.
Thank you, Sally, for your kind introduction, and for this incredible naming that is so meaningful to me. I am not just grateful but also amazed that—with all your tremendous responsibilities and the unbelievable distractions you have been dealing with—you still found time to think of me.
Thank you, Mark, for honoring me with your presence, and for the terrific work you are doing as Corporation chair. You are keeping the Corporation united and working together in constructive ways with a laser-beam focus on the benefit to MIT.
Thank you, Cindy, for the enormous dedication you have given to MIT for so many years, for your remarkable and historical contributions as Chancellor, and for the impressive job you have done as Provost working with two MIT presidents.
And to my dear Institute Professor John Harbison, thank you for adding a note of sweetness today, going straight to my heart. It brings me moving memories of the rhumba you composed and played at my inauguration, 13 years ago.
I thank all of you for coming!
I was recently given the unique and immense privilege of choosing a naming location at MIT. One of the two options offered was this corridor.
I decided to think about what I most wished for, and I thought about the spaces that my predecessors had chosen. Some were honored with destinations—such as a building or physical structure that is used often for meetings. Some were honored with scenic pieces of the MIT grounds, which could be used for gatherings.
This corridor is neither a destination nor a gathering space. It is a space to rush through. Yet, the more I thought of it, the more I liked it. The more I realized how much it meant to me, and how grateful I was to the MIT leadership for thinking of it for me, and for suggesting it.
This corridor connects Building 39 in the north (home of MTL, the lab where I grew up) and Building 13 in the south (home of CMSE). Towards the east, it connects with MIT.nano, the Lisa Su building, or Building 12. And Building 39 is next to Building 38 (home of EECS HQs, my home department)—which is across from Building 45, housing the Schwarzman College of Computing. I am deeply connected to each of these buildings.
My first office and lab at MIT were in Building 13. Then my students and I moved to Building 39, while we still had labs in Building 13.
Then my office moved to Building 38, my students and lab stayed in Building 39, and we still used labs in Building 13. There was a lot of bustling around.
Eventually my office moved to the Main Group, while the center of gravity of my research stayed for years at the nexus of Buildings 39 and 13. This was, for me, and my students, a well-traveled corridor.
MIT.nano and the Schwarzman College came during my presidency, as I thought MIT had to play a leading role in the future of nanotechnology (the hard tech) as well as the future of artificial intelligence (the soft tech) — and I envisioned these two technologies enabling and advancing each other.
That is my physical connection to the corridor.
But there was one more critical element.
As I was thinking about this corridor, a memory came to me. A little over 20 years ago, my daughter and I went to Vienna. I wanted to visit the city and the place where my father lived in his youth. I remember the intense emotion I felt walking on the same sidewalks and streets my father walked as a young man 80 years before, and visiting the apartment building where he used to live. I was briefly able to see the past through his eyes and to sense what he sensed long ago. Those emotions made choosing the corridor an easy and obvious decision for me.
The people who pass through this corridor in the future will surely continue to experience the unparalleled excitement of being young at MIT, with the full expectation of upending the world to improve it.
They may experience the undimmed excitement of being middle aged at MIT, alongside extraordinary students and colleagues, and realize how fortunate they are to be embraced by the remarkable power of this crossroad.
Some of them may also feel the deep satisfaction of having created infinite memories here throughout a long career.
Even if none of them gives me a thought, I would like to believe that my spirit will be here, watching them with pride as they continue the never-ending mission of creating a better world.
And now, I must beg for your patience, as I want to thank just a few of the people who worked closely with me and who made my time as MIT president such a wonderful experience:
- Cindy Barnhart, Melissa Nobles, Anantha Chandrakasan, Marty Schmidt
- Mark DiVincenzo, Glen Shor, Suzanne Glassburn, Greg Morgan, Israel Ruiz
- Phil Clay, Claude Canizares, Maria Zuber, Richard Lester, Chris Kaiser
- Ann McNamara, Karla Casey, Ellen Patton
- Martha Eddison, Aaron Weinberger
- Julie Lucas, Whitney Espich, Kirk Kolenbrander, Alfred Ironside
- Mary Beth Riley, Erica Voigt, Renie Pavilon, Liliana Velez
- Joe Higgins, Ted Johnson, Doreen Morris, and the one and only Gayle Gallagher
I also want to thank my supportive family here today:
- My very special wife Chris, who has been my everyday sunshine and partner throughout
- My daughter, Jessica, my pride and joy, who has been a blessing to my life, together with her terrific husband, Ben, and their delightful children, my grandchildren, Mina and Moshe; and
- My brother Isaac, who has been a role model and a North Star to me since I was little, as well as my brilliant niece, Tania
I thank you all for taking time out of your extremely busy schedules to be here today. Each and every one of you has been an inspiring presence and a great companion throughout my life’s journey at MIT.
Thank you.