Simi Olusola-Ajayi, a graduating Master’s pupil in Human-Computer Interaction, will probably be this 12 months’s pupil graduation speaker.
Carnegie Mellon will maintain its main 2026 commencement ceremony for bachelor’s, grasp’s, and doctoral diploma candidates on May 10. Speakers embrace honorary doctorate recipients Jensen Huang, Jamie deRoy, Samuel John Hazo, and Thomas J. Sargent, and pupil speaker, Simi Olusola-Ajayi. The 90-minute ceremony will start at 10 a.m., and attendees have to be seated by 9:15 a.m. to view the coed procession.
Jensen Huang is the CEO and co-founding father of expertise firm NVIDIA. He is the 2026 graduation Keynote Speaker and will probably be receiving the Honorary Doctorate of Science and Technology.
Carnegie Mellon alum Jamie deRoy graduated from the College of Fine Arts in 1967. She has produced over 100 exhibits each on and off Broadway, successful 14 Tony Awards. This graduation, she’s going to obtain the Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts.
Samuel John Hazo will probably be receiving the Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters. He is a Pittsburgh native, an creator, the primary poet laureate of Pennsylvania, and the founding father of the International Poetry Forum.
Thomas J. Sargent is the Tepper Ph.D. Diploma Ceremony Speaker and will probably be receiving the Honorary Doctor of Science and Technology. He has been the William Berkley Professor of Economics at New York University since 2002, and obtained a Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2011. He was additionally a Research Associate on the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1967. He will probably be receiving the Honorary Doctor of Science and Technology.
Honorary doctorate recipients are chosen via a process involving college students, alumni, employees, and committees. Nominees should additionally meet certain criteria: They should both have extraordinary achievements inside their discipline, have made exemplary contributions to society, or have made a constructive impression and dedication to Carnegie Mellon.
Simi Olusola-Ajayi, a pupil within the human-pc interplay grasp’s program (HCI), is that this 12 months’s pupil speaker. She beforehand obtained her bachelor’s in psychology from The Pennsylvania State University and has labored as a strategist for the final seven years. After commencement, she plans on attending legislation college.
Olusola-Ajayi acknowledged that she utilized to be the coed speaker after consoling and giving recommendation to a pal.
“That is the beauty of life — it’s that we don’t always look like our experiences. And that’s it. This thing that feels so huge and insurmountable has a way of working itself out,” stated Olusola-Ajayi. “I share that story with her. She’s like, ‘Wow, this is great,’ and we just joked, ‘You should totally be the commencement speaker.’”
Olusola-Ajayi stated that she has adopted an untraditional path for her training, returning to varsity after years working full-time, and never all the time having a transparent plan. This perspective is one thing she hopes to convey to her speech.
“What I hope to communicate is just this idea of the things that don’t make the highlight, they are still an important part of life,” Olusola-Ajayi stated. “And we have the advantage of a Carnegie Mellon education that has taught us, you know, how to navigate uncertainty.”
As a pupil within the HCI Institute with earlier expertise in expertise-associated fields, Olusola-Ajayi hopes to the touch on accountable innovation in each college and trade.
“I think innovation itself is not a bad thing … it’s a thing to welcome and I’m glad to see Carnegie Mellon’s role in that space,” Olusola-Ajayi stated. “With that level of responsibility for innovation also comes a responsibility that comes with it. It’s not innovation for the sake of innovation, [it’s] in service of a greater reason, innovation in service of people. So just always keeping in the back of our minds the ‘why’ behind everything.”
