Khoury College celebrates 2025 commencement with record number of graduates

Matthews Arena has hosted innumerable events, teams, and celebrities in its storied 115-year history. Babe Ruth and Muhammad Ali. Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh. Four US presidents. The Boston Bruins and the Boston Celtics during their earliest days. 

Now that the arena, the oldest of its kind in the world, is planned for demolition and replacement, the coming months will serve as an extended goodbye to a piece of Boston history. On Wednesday, May 7, the students of Khoury College took their turn, with an undergraduate celebration in the morning and a graduate counterpart in the afternoon. Northeastern University’s graduation will follow on Sunday, May 11 at Fenway Park. 

Both the undergraduate class of 944 students and the master’s class of 763 represent record totals for Khoury College. All undergraduates walked the stage for the college’s commencement celebration in Boston, as did the 431 master’s students who studied in Boston; the remaining master’s students will be recognized at ceremonies in Arlington, Oakland, Portland, Seattle, Silicon Valley, and Vancouver. Both classes include graduates from more than 30 US states and 30 countries. 

At Wednesday’s celebrations, Dean Elizabeth Mynatt was flanked by Provost David Madigan (graduate ceremony), Vice Provost Mike Jackson (undergraduate ceremony), Trustees Hemant Taneja and John Pulichino (undergraduate ceremony), and master of ceremonies and Senior Associate Dean for Academic Programs and Student Experience Ben Hescott (both ceremonies). In her keynote, Mynatt encouraged students to stand firm in the belief that computer science should benefit everyone, especially given the breakneck pace of innovation in the field. 

“My call to all of you today is to be purposeful in your decisions,” she said. “Computing technology is rarely neutral due to how deeply computing is ingrained in our society. As computer scientists it is imperative that we harness what we learn and what we discover to better the world we inhabit.” 

Mynatt hailed a number of Khoury students whose has accomplished just that — Britney Ise Okhiria’s research into the use of blood biomarker data to diagnose bipolar and major depressive disorder; Sebastian Tremblay’s software engineering and advocacy on behalf of people with diabetes; Shannen Espinosa’s myriad projects at the nexus of computing, public policy, and medicine; and Crystal Zhang’s mentorship of fellow women in computing and her community coding work. 

“Every day, no matter where you are in the stack, your profession strives to augment human action — through networking that connects us, through the data that describes us, through the design of systems that promote creativity, problem solving, and collaboration,” Mynatt said. “Thus, you have a powerful role in bootstrapping human activity to address pressing problems.  

“Your values for how to serve society are your own.” She added, “Just know that your profession calls you to integrate those values with your professional practice.” 

Mayukha Bhamidipati, a data science and economics student who spoke at the undergraduate ceremony, called on her fellow graduates to follow that same internal compass. 

“We are entering a world that feels like it’s shifting beneath our feet, and the temptation is to mold ourselves into what we think the world demands,” she said. “But that’s a trap. Abundance follows when we live authentically. The most successful, fulfilled, and impactful people aren’t the ones who try to fit into existing molds, but rather the ones who build new ones.” 

In this philosophy, the uncertainties of the world aren’t causes for concern; they’re opportunities for new professionals to apply their values and ambitions to new challenges. 

“Graduation isn’t just a milestone; it’s a threshold. We step across it carrying everything we’ve learned — inside and outside the classroom,” Bhamidipati said. “Even as we scatter to different corners of the world, the community we have built here does not leave us. It exists in the ways we show up, in the values we carry, in the quiet confidence of knowing we were shaped by something rare and meaningful.” 

In the afternoon ceremony, Kushal Shankar concluded his master’s journey in computer science by comparing life to coding — frustrating at times, but pure joy when hard work forces everything into place. 

“We’re here not because everything worked the first time, but because it didn’t, and we refused to quit,” he said. “Khoury College taught us that computing isn’t just about writing code. It’s about which problems we choose to solve … and who we build for.” 

Shankar noted that despite the wide range of experience the students began with, from first-time coders to lifelong CS specialists, they all left with technical skills and a profound sense of responsibility. 

“No matter how we got here, today we stand together as engineers, as innovators, as changemakers,” he said. “Because behind every line of code is a person whose life can improve.”