IEOR Class of 2026
Congratulations From IEOR Chair, Xin Guo
Dear Class of 2026,
Congratulations on your graduation. It is a great pleasure and honor to celebrate this important milestone with all of our graduating students, and with the families, friends, faculty, and staff who have supported you throughout this journey.
This year, the IEOR department awards degrees to 315 students: 15 Bachelor of Arts in Analytics, 71 Bachelor of Science in IEOR, 78 Master of Engineering, 130 Master of Analytics, 8 Master of Science, and 13 PhD graduates. Today, you join a distinguished community of more than 5,000 Berkeley IEOR alumni whose work continues to shape industry, government, research, and society around the world. This community’s legacy is extraordinary. Between 2020 and 2025 alone, five of Berkeley faculty won Nobel prizes, and more than a dozen Berkeley alumni became Nobel laureates. To be part of this tradition of excellence is both inspiring and humbling.
This is also a remarkable moment in history for IEOR graduates. Advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning are rapidly transforming the way we live, work, and make decisions. As IEOR graduates, you are uniquely prepared to navigate and embrace a world in which traditional scientific boundaries continue to disappear. Your education has equipped you not only with technical expertise, but also with the ability to think critically across disciplines, to model complex systems, and to make decisions under uncertainty. Most importantly, you carry forward the broader vision of serving as responsible citizens in the age of AI. Your training equips you to understand the societal consequences of technological decisions and to design systems that are robust, human-centered, ethical, and socially beneficial.
IEOR graduates, you and your families entrusted Berkeley and our department with one of the most formative periods of your lives. Together, we have written an important chapter of your personal and professional journey. Many years from now, the memories of A’s and C’s may slowly fade. But the words “IEOR” and “UC Berkeley” will always carry a special heartbeat. The spirit of Berkeley, and the stories, friendships, struggles, and triumphs you experienced here, will remain with you for the rest of your lives. They will shape not only what you achieved here, but also who you become.
I would like to take this moment to recognize and thank your families and loved ones for their sacrifices, encouragement, and unwavering support. As you grow older, I believe you will come to appreciate their contributions even more deeply: perhaps, as engineers would say, polynomially more as you grow linearly older.
Berkeley IEOR, your alma mater, will always remain your intellectual home. At a recent alumni gathering, I was deeply moved to meet graduates from more than fifty years ago standing alongside alumni who traveled halfway across the world simply to return to Berkeley. That sense of connection speaks to the enduring spirit of this community. So today, on behalf of our faculty and staff, I say to you: stay in touch, come back to visit when you can, and continue to be part of the Berkeley IEOR family wherever life takes you.
Congratulations once again to the Class of 2026. We are proud of you, and we look forward to all that you will accomplish.
Go Bears!
Sincerely,
Xin Guo
Professor and Department Chair
Berkeley IEOR
Student Commencement Remarks
Helen Chang
B.S. IEOR '26
Good afternoon to you all. To all the family and friends who made the trip to celebrate with us, thank you for being here.
My name is Helen Chang, and it is my honor to deliver the commencement address for the Industrial Engineering and Operations Research Department today.
Let me begin by extending the highest gratitude to the esteemed faculty, department staff, and our loving friends and family. Your support is reflected in every success we are celebrating today.
And now, congratulations to my fellow graduates. Together, we have persevered through 11:59 deadlines, we have made lasting friendships, and after four years, we can officially optimize anything—maybe except parking today and last Saturday.
In these four years, all of my fellow graduates and I have repeatedly been asked one type of question: What kind of engineer are you? Really, what do you do?
At my first Cal Day after being admitted, I may have said, “An engineer that works with business.” After my first IEOR pizza party, I may have said, “We help make manufacturing lines and Disneyland lines more efficient.” After my first internship, I may have said, “Oh, I do data science.” And just a few days ago, at our senior project presentations, our team would say, “We helped our client!” But realistically, our client helped me love caffeine.
While all true, my answer now to “What do we IEOR students do?”—to finally clarify to our families and friends—is: we make things better.
Technically, we use mathematical models, such as stochastic or queuing models, to transform complex, real-world systems into problems computers can quickly solve. We create simulations, write optimization programs, and analyze data to find inefficient workflow. And then we create the solution.
Having explained what we do, I believe what’s far more important is what we can do. When I said I do data science, I actually mean my work benefits the entire semiconductor supply chain and its current shortage. In IEOR, instead of specializing in building rockets, we help ensure that rockets can actually be built — economically, operationally and through resilient supply chains. We can provide human ergonomic studies and create simulations to determine safety. And for current AI trends, every LLM answer is generated by solving optimization techniques we develop. While everyone adapts to new technology like AI, we IEOR graduates are prepared to see and drive changes. We can then make the changes even better. We can also extend to all domains. To name a few industries, we often enter consulting, healthcare, or manufacturing. We specialize in ensuring the systems in everyday life run.
So, my message to all my fellow graduates is: while everyone asks you, “What do you do?” remember what you can do. Answer confidently: we can solve problems, reach optimal decisions, and create meaningful impact wherever we go. We can ensure that the systems we shape are efficient and improve the well-being of the people we care about most.
Here, the IEOR commencement is called a commencement not just because it marks the completion of our undergrad journey, but because it marks a beginning.
Congratulations, Class of 2026! Go Bears!
