One of the greatest privileges of my job is getting to celebrate with our graduates and their families at Commencement, and I took immense encouragement this past weekend, when we sent off more than 6,300 future leaders.

Earlier this month, I had the great pleasure of speaking at the investiture of our friend, Mike Shannon, as president of the University of North Georgia (UNG) in beautiful Dahlonega. Mike is a two-time alumnus (M.S. HP 2003, Ph.D. NRE 2009), a nuclear engineer, and a 20-year veteran of the U.S. Army. [...] Mike is a rare breed, and it’s no wonder the Board of Regents tapped him to be UNG’s president. However, Mike is just the latest Yellow Jacket to accept a leadership position in academia or public service in Georgia.

Georgia Tech researchers are creating new diagnostics, treatments, and devices to help us fight our worst diseases, including cancer. Three recent grants from the newly established Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) will help us accelerate this work and contribute to America’s moonshot goal to halve cancer-related deaths by 2047.

Ever since I arrived in this country, I have admired how central philanthropy is to American culture and how deeply rooted it is in its history.

This fall, we're debuting a new public flagship event for our city. We call it Avant South at Georgia Tech, and we’re holding the inaugural two-day summit Sept. 28 – 29. With it, we’re aiming to create an annual convention that will bring the finest minds and voices to Atlanta every autumn to explore and discuss the most consequential issues related to technology facing humanity.