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Khan Academy’s Sal Khan To Deliver 2012 Commencement Address At MIT

By TechTaffy Desk

Sal Khan ’98, MEng ‘98, whose free YouTube lectures have been viewed more than 100 million times, will deliver the address at MIT’s 146th Commencement exercises on Friday, June 8, in Killian Court.

The holder of three MIT degrees — a bachelor’s in electrical engineering and computer science, a bachelor’s in mathematics, and a master’s in electrical engineering and computer science — Khan left his job as a hedge fund analyst to found the Khan Academy, whose library of nearly 3,000 homemade videos offers viewers a wide variety of lessons in mathematics and the sciences. The Khan Academy’s YouTube channel has more than 227,000 followers.

Khan was president of MIT’s Class of 1998. While at the Institute, he was the recipient of a Peter J. Eloranta Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship, which he used to develop web-based math software for children with ADHD.

A Bangladeshi-American born and raised in New Orleans, Khan began tutoring his young cousin, Nadia, in mathematics over the Internet in 2004. As friends and relatives began clamoring for wider access to his lectures, Khan started posting them on YouTube in 2006.

Khan joins a list of guest speakers at recent MIT Commencements, including Xerox CEO Ursula Burns (2011), Raymond S. Stata ’57, chairman and co-founder of Analog Devices Inc. (2010), Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick (2009), Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus (2008), MIT President Emeritus Charles M. Vest (2007) and alumnus and Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Ben Bernanke (2006).

 

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