While it’s easy to be amazed by the constant drumbeat of innovations coming from Kendall Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, sometimes overlooked are the dedicated individuals working to make those scientific and technological breakthroughs a reality. Every day, people in the neighborhood tackle previously intractable problems and push the frontiers of their fields.
This year’s Kendall Square Association (KSA) Annual Meeting centered around celebrating the people behind the area’s prolific innovation ecosystem. That included a new slate of awards and recognitions for community members and a panel discussion featuring MIT President Sally Kornbluth.
“It’s truly inspiring to be surrounded by all of you: people who seem to share an exuberant curiosity, a pervasive ethic of service, and the baseline expectation that we’re all interested in impact — in making a difference for people and the planet,” Kornbluth said.
The gathering took place in MIT’s Walker Memorial (Building 50) on Memorial Drive and attracted entrepreneurs, life science workers, local students, restaurant and retail shop owners, and leaders of nonprofits.
The KSA itself is a nonprofit organization made up of over 150 organizations across the greater Kendall Square region, from large companies to universities like MIT and Harvard, along with the independent shops and restaurants that give Kendall Square its distinct character.
New to this year’s event were two Founder Awards, which were given to Sangeeta Bhatia, the the John and Dorothy Wilson Professor of Health Sciences and Technology and of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT, and Michal Preminger, head of Johnson and Johnson Innovation, for their work bringing people together to achieve hard things that benefit humanity.
The KSA will donate $2,500 to the Science Club for Girls in Bhatia’s honor and $2,500 to Innovators for Purpose in honor of Preminger.
Recognition was also given to Alex Cheung of the Cambridge Innovation Center and Shazia Mir of LabCentral for their work bringing Kendall Square’s community members together.
Cambridge Mayor Denise Simmons also spoke at the event, noting the vital role the Kendall Square community has played in things like Covid-19 vaccine development and in the fight against climate change.
“As many of you know, Cambridge has a long and proud history of innovation, with the presence of MIT and the remarkable growth of the tech and life science industry examples of that,” Simmons said. “We are leaving a lasting, positive impact in our city. This community has made and continues to make enormous contributions, not just to our city but to the world.”
In her talk, Kornbluth also introduced the Kendall Square community to her plans for The Climate Project at MIT, which is designed to focus the Institute’s talent and resources to achieve real-world impact on climate change faster. The project will provide funding and catalyze partnerships around six climate “missions,” or broad areas where MIT researchers will seek to identify gaps in the global climate response that MIT can help fill.
“The Climate Project is a whole-of-MIT mobilization that’s mission driven, solution focused, and outward looking,” Kornbluth explained. “If you want to make progress, faster and at scale, that’s the way!”
After mingling with Kendall community members, Kornbluth said she still considers herself a newbie to the area but is coming to see the success of Kendall Square and MIT as more than a coincidence.
“The more time I spend here, the more I come to understand the incredible synergies between MIT and Kendall Square,” Kornbluth said. “We know, for example, that proximity is an essential ingredient in our collective and distinctive recipe for impact. That proximity, and the cross-fertilization that comes with it, helps us churn out new technologies and patents, found startups, and course-correct our work as we try to keep pace with the world’s challenges. We can’t do any of this separately. Our work together — all of us in this thriving, wildly entrepreneurial community — is what drives the success of our innovation ecosystem.”
