Creating a historic benchmark by crossing 1,600 plus offers in the Phase I of placement season 2021, IIT Kharagpur celebrated its 67th Convocation on December 18, 2021. The Minister of Education and Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, Government of India, Dharmendra Pradhan, graced the occasion as the chief guest. Sanjiv Goenka, Chairman, Board of Governors, IIT Kharagpur virtually attended the convocation.
With prolific advancement towards engaging in new advances in technological pursuits and branching out to diverse fields of medical, law, management and entrepreneurship, for the first time IIT Kharagpur bestowed a Lifetime Achievement Award to Professor M A Ramlu who served as the founder Head of the Department of Mining Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) and retired as an Officiating Director of IIT Kharagpur.
Along with Professor Ramlu, five awardees, including Professor Sadhan Kumar De, Prof. Biswa Nath Chatterji, Puran Chand Dang, Shri Gopal Rajgarhia and Dr Asoke Kumar Deysarkar were conferred the Life Fellow Awards of IIT Kharagpur 2021.
5 pioneers comprising Professor Suresh Chandra Mishra, Commander VK Jaitly, Dr Mohan Rao, Krishan Mohan Khanna and Dr Mukund Padmanabhan were also honoured with the Distinguished Alumnus Awards. This year. IIT Kharagpur conferred the Doctor of Sciences (Honoris Causa) to 3 eminent personalities, namely Dr Krishnaswamy Kasturirangan, Dr Tessy Thomas and Professor Harish Chandra Verma.
List of awardees
This year, the President of India Gold Medal for the best academic performance among the outgoing BTech (Honours) and BArch (Honours) students was awarded to Gurjot Singh Suri, Department of Computer Science and Engineering who hails from Assam. A district topper in high school, he was awarded a scholarship by the Government of Assam to be selected for IIT Kharagpur. He is currently working as a Software Engineer for Uber India.
The Prime Minster of India Gold Medal for the best academic performance in the Dual Degree and Integrated MSc. Outgoing students are awarded to Omar Eqbal, Department of Computer Science and Engineering. A topper, a NTSE scholar, selected for a KVPY fellowship from Patna, Omar Eqbal, is currently working as a software engineer at Nutanix.
Further, Dharmendra Pradhan in his address said that it is a privilege to enter into the ecosystem of IIT Kharagpur, which was chosen as the first Centre of Excellence in the country after independence. He said that the Indian knowledge system has been established on the grounds of Hijli Detention Camp, which enriches the historic culture of IIT Kharagpur and is recognised as the post-independence temple of learning.
Achieving the 100 crore vaccinations was possible because of the IITs and NITs. In the 21st century, the economy of the world will be run by those who have the market, the qualitative low-cost workforce and the critical minds. He added that India can produce clean energy at one fourth of the cost compared to European countries, which would be made possible by the IITians, which is already proven in many verticals. He also added that India needs to build a low-cost energy and the manufacturing unit of the worlds which will come here which will lead to economic empowerment.
Furthermore, the education minister said, “IIT Kharagpur should become the epicentre of major research initiatives that can make India a global power like America, and that IIT Kharagpur should innovate ways of incorporating MSMEs and implement alternate energy into a localised funded grid. He also informed about the leadership role IIT Kharagpur has taken in the area of VLSI chip design.
[“source=indiatoday”]
