Kevin Lynch, Vice President of Technology at Apple, where he leads the software team for the Apple Watch, was the keynote speaker at the UIC midyear undergraduate commencement on December 11, 2015. His address centered around bravery, imagination and kindness. His message encouraged UIC graduates to have “bravery to speak your mind and effect change” and extolled the importance of imagination as “the art of what should be, and the science of what can be.”

He advised the new graduates to have “the bravery to speak your mind and effect change. Change in the world, change in your life, change in your work. In my work, the best of times have been the bravest of times, certainly not the easiest…Give yourself permission to be imaginative…Imagination enables empathy: to put yourself in someone else’s place and to understand…As we’ve become more profoundly connected through technology, kindness can become more challenging as our relationships can become more abstract, more diffuse, with a larger number of others. These connections can also be incredibly powerful if we remember these are humans and maintain our ability to be kind in our interactions…What you will remember most over time, more than details of what you did, is how you felt and how you made others feel.”

Thirty years ago, Lynch studied Computer Science at UIC and was involved in the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL). In his speech, he credits EVL with teaching him “the creative power of Art + Science. Working in the Electronic Visualization Lab, I experienced engineers and artists working together, literally sitting at the same lab benches. We’d be developing graphics software, and artists would be using it to make art - and imagine new features right there.”

After the commencement, Lynch visited several UIC colleges and departments, including EVL, where he saw art and science applications in EVL’s CAVE2™ system, met with Engineering and Architecture, Design and the Arts faculty members, and held a Q&A session with CS undergraduate and graduate students.

See the transcript and video of Kevin Lynch’s presentation.

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