Mark Rober to deliver MIT’s 2023 Commencement address
Mark Rober, a NASA engineer-turned-internet superstar whose vastly in style movies have a good time problem-solving, dedication, and having enjoyable whereas studying, will ship the handle on the OneMIT Graduation Ceremony on Thursday, June 1.
Additionally an entrepreneur and educator, Rober is best-known for his profitable YouTube channel, which hosts movies with title resembling “Egg Drop From Area” and “Can You Swim in Jell-O?” Whereas the subjects are light-hearted, every video explores some side of science or engineering. The strategy has discovered success; the channel has 23 million subscribers and greater than 3 billion views.
Rober is the founding father of CrunchLabs, which creates instructional toy-making kits aimed toward encouraging youngsters to suppose like engineers; he additionally teaches a wide range of on-line courses on science and engineering subjects. Just lately, Rober teamed up with one other YouTuber, Jimmy Donaldson, also called MrBeast, leveraging their in style platforms to fight local weather change.
“The best lecturers deliver a topic to life in an irresistible means,” says MIT President L. Rafael Reif. “For thousands and thousands of younger learners (and some older ones, too), Mark Rober is making science and engineering inspiring, partaking, accessible, and most significantly, enjoyable. His movies and build-box kits brim with creativity and power — hand-on studying at its most interesting. We’re delighted to welcome Mark to campus for this spring’s ceremony. And we’re so grateful that he has finally settled a query that has troubled scientists and first graders for years: What wouldn’t it seem like to bellyflop on Jell-O?”
“My ardour is getting individuals, particularly younger individuals, stoked about science, schooling, and engineering,” says Rober. “I’m additionally such a believer in hands-on, sensible engineering options to real-world issues, and I can’t consider a faculty that has a greater status for that than MIT. I’m excited to return out and meet the Class of 2023 and have a good time all of the wonderful, constructive change they’re going to deliver to the world.”
After learning mechanical engineering at Brigham Younger College and the College of Southern California, Rober spent 9 years as a mechanical engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. That included seven years Mars Curiosity rover group, engaged on the jet pack that lowered the rover to the floor and on different {hardware} used for gathering grime samples.
Rober then moved to Silicon Valley and labored for 5 years on product design in Apple’s Particular Tasks group. In 2011, his iPad-based Halloween costume inadvertently helped launch his YouTube channel.
“Mark’s technical experience, alongside along with his extraordinary expertise for communication, has enabled him to showcase the sensible energy of science and engineering,” says James Poterba, the Mitsui Professor of Economics and the chair of the Graduation Committee. “His capability to make complicated ideas not simply related, however enjoyable, has performed an vital half in advancing each public understanding of science and STEM schooling.”
“I like taking science and engineering to make it attention-grabbing sufficient so that children wish to click on on it and it turns into aspirational,” Rober mentioned in a current interview with CNBC. “I attempt to cover the greens with getting the science and engineering message on the market.” He does this, partially, via making compelling engineering builds, such because the world’s largest Nerf gun or an impediment course in his yard to guard his hen feeder from squirrels.
In 2019, Rober and Donaldson launched Workforce Timber, an initiative with the objective of planting 20 million timber. They adopted this with Workforce Seas, which goals to take away 30 million kilos of plastics from oceans, rivers, and seashores. Each efforts shortly achieved their targets, with participation from quite a few volunteers, demonstrating the ability of social media to have interaction individuals in environmental causes.
“I’m so excited to have Mark Rober converse at graduation. As an ex-NASA rocket scientist turned YouTuber, he evokes our youth to have interaction with science via objectively pleasant movies and introduces a world of magic that one can perceive via science and know-how,” says Anna Solar, president of MIT’s Class of 2023. “Precisely described because the ‘Willy Wonka of engineering,’ Rober has an acumen for innovation and serves as an inspiration for redefining how we college students can use our information to impression these round us. I can’t wait to be taught extra from his experiences.”
“Bringing people from all walks of life into an academic setting is a characteristic of MIT, and Mark Rober captures this MIT high quality via outreach movies that spark creativeness and innovation within the minds of learners throughout the globe,” says David Spicer, president of the Undergraduate Affiliation. “Science and engineering will not be static. Training isn’t stagnant. Rober is a recent instance of the significance of bringing the brand new technology of learners into STEM schooling via pioneering strategies.”
“Mark Rober is a superb exemplar of the quirky, artistic power for engineering we so extremely and uniquely worth at MIT, and I can’t wait to listen to him converse at Graduation,” says AJ Miller, president of the Graduate Pupil Council. “I like how he makes constructing and speaking science enjoyable and accessible to everybody and evokes so many younger individuals to pursue schooling and careers in know-how.”
Rober joins notable current MIT Graduation audio system together with Director-Common of the World Commerce Group Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (2022); lawyer and social justice activist Bryan Stevenson (2021); retired U.S. Navy four-star admiral William McRaven (2020); three-term New York Metropolis mayor and philanthropist Michael Bloomberg (2019); Fb COO Sheryl Sandberg (2018); Apple CEO Tim Prepare dinner (2017); and actor and filmmaker Matt Damon (2016).