May 2026 News

Academy Alum Mason Smith (2005) to be Commencement Speaker

Friday, May 8, 2026

The Indiana Academy is pleased to announce that Mason Smith, Class of 2005, will be the featured speaker at our thirty-fifth Commencement Ceremony, to be held on Saturday, May 23 at 11:30 a.m. in Emens Auditorium on the campus of Ball State University.

Mason is an experienced software engineer in quantitative finance. Originally from Gary, Indiana, he graduated from the Indiana Academy in 2005. Mason was awarded the Rea and Lela Axline Scholarship to attend the California Institute of Technology. He graduated from Caltech with honors in 2009, earning B.S. degrees in mathematics and computer science.

Mason received an AT&T Labs fellowship and an ARCS Foundation Scholarship to attend the University of California, Berkeley to pursue a PhD in computer science. However, he left graduate school early to pursue a career in industry.

For 15 years, he has worked at TGS Management Company in various software engineering roles for building quantitative trading systems and infrastructure to support quantitative research.

He recently served on the Board of Trustees for Caltech and currently serves on the Board of Directors of Trickle Up and Innovations for Poverty Action. He is also a member of the Indiana Academy Alumni Advisory Council.

We are very grateful that Mason has chosen to return to the Academy to share his wisdom with the Class of 2026.