IIT-Bombay on Sunday held its 58th annual convocation ceremony in a virtual reality mode in view of the coronavirus pandemic. "The Institute thought it best to arrange such a VR-convocation for the graduating students so as not to put their health at risk but at the same time, not deprive them of the sense of achievement and pride of passing out of India’s premier engineering Institute," IIT-Bombay said.
The personalized avatar of each graduate received the degree certificate from the personalized avatar of the Director Prof. Subhasis Chaudhuri.
Speaking on the occasion, the director said, “Providing a virtual reality experience to all our graduates needed not only highly innovative steps but also a tremendous effort by our professors and staff. They did it for the students. Hopefully this will enthuse our graduates as well as other engineers in the country to think big and think innovatively."
“Producing top quality graduates who would be future leaders in industry, research and academia is the primary goal of IIT Bombay. The skill they developed, the work culture they picked up and the peers they made during their studies at IIT Bombay will help them achieve success in their lives. The entire nation will be looking forward to their contributions in taking our country ahead," he added.
Prof. Duncan Haldane, co-recipient of the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics, and a Professor of Physics at Princeton University, was the Chief Guest during the ceremony. Stephen Schwarzman, Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of Blackstone, world- renowned investor and philanthropist was the Guest of Honor.
In his speech, Stephen A. Schwarzman said, “India occupies a unique position in the world today, especially when it comes to technology, where it has established global leadership through its talent. Of the 72 Indian-origin engineers who have founded unicorns across the world, 50 percent are IIT alumni. IIT engineers are defining the global technology landscape and the newest alumni will be the next generation of future global leaders who will advance that mission". He further said, with a young, ambitious and tech-savvy population, a forward-thinking government that supports entrepreneurship, and the fourth-largest start-up ecosystem in the world, India is poised to stake its claim as one of the world's great innovation hubs."
