Archit Babuna (B.Tech. Computer Science and Engineering) Awarded President’s Gold Medal

 Aditya Vimal (B.Tech. Civil Engineering) Receives Director’s Gold Medal

(Photo: 54^th IIT Delhi Convocation Ceremony)

New Delhi: IIT Delhi organised its 54th Annual Convocation on Saturday (August 12). Dr. Gagandeep Kang, an eminent virologist and Director, Enterics, Diagnostics, Genomics and Epidemiology-Global Health, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, USA, was the chief guest on this occasion.

Dr. R. Chidambaram, Chairperson, Board of Governors, IIT Delhi; Prof. Rangan Banerjee, Director; Senators; senior functionaries of the Institute; faculty members; staff; students; and their parents were present in the iconic Dogra Hall of the Institute, the venue for the Convocation ceremony.

At the Convocation ceremony, 2357 Graduating students were awarded Degrees and Diplomas. Mr. Archit Babuna, B.Tech. in Computer Science and Engineering, was awarded the President’s Gold Medal; Mr. Aditya Vimal, B.Tech. in Civil Engineering, received the Director’s Gold Medal. Dibya Jyoti Sarangi, M.Tech. in Applied Optics, was awarded the Dr. Shankar Dayal Sharma (Former President of India) Gold Medal.

Three students, namely Ms. Ashitha Devi Pattabi, M.S. (R) in Materials Science and Engineering; Ms. Narayani Bhatia, M.S. (R) in Electrical Engineering; and Mr. Mahajan Swapnil Dashrath (Meenal), M.Tech. in Polymer Science and Technology, received the Prefect Ten Gold Medal.

 

 

(Photo: Chief Guest Dr. Gagandeep Kang)

Addressing the graduating students at the Convocation ceremony, Chief Guest Dr. Gagandeep Kang said, “Your alma mater is a special place. IIT Delhi’s vision is to contribute to India and the world through excellence in scientific and technical education and research, to be a source of pride for all Indians and be a resource for society. In other words, you are called on to excel and to serve.

IIT Delhi has a long-standing tradition of producing outstanding alumni who have excelled in various fields, making significant contributions to both India and the world. This culture of rigour, dedication, and pursuit of excellence has become the hallmark of an IIT graduate. As you enter the next phase of your life, hold onto this legacy of a scientific culture and let it inspire you in all you do.

You are stepping into the world equipped with the power of science and technology. Science has solutions to offer for many of the problems we face in society, and the privilege of receiving high-quality education and training from an esteemed institution like IIT Delhi comes with responsibility to use your skills for service.”

Dr. Gagandeep Kang further said, “From my base at CMC, Vellore, I worked with the Government of India and with the World Health Organization and international research funders in the UK, the US, and Europe. We were learning from the communities we worked with, and the children who joined our studies before they were born, and applied it to try to mitigate the damage that resulted from diarrhoea. We failed often, succeeded occasionally, and now I can look back and say that the vaccines we worked on saved about 30,000 children’s lives in India every year. The hundreds of other people who worked on the vaccine and I have served. These vaccines are now going to Africa and the Middle East and will likely be in Latin America soon. The work of Indian scientists and Indian companies provides tools that benefit the world. This is just one example of what is possible from a base in India”.

Dr. Kang is the first woman from India to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and the second elected to the US National Academy of Medicine. She is the only physician- scientist to receive the Infosys Award in Life Sciences. She received her training in medicine and microbiology at the Christian Medical College, Vellore, and postdoctoral training in the UK and US, before returning to India to continue her work on enteric infections in children. With Indian and global collaborators, Dr. Kang has worked on the development and use of vaccines for rotaviruses, cholera, and typhoid, conducting large studies to define burden, test vaccines, and measure their impact. She has shown that infections in early life impact nutrition, future growth, and cognitive development.

(Photo: Dr. R. Chidambaram, Chairperson, Board of Governors, IIT Delhi)

Addressing the Convocation ceremony, Dr. R. Chidambaram, Chairperson, Board of Governors; IIT Delhi, said “The IIT system, as I have often said, has a very high global brand equity; and among the IITs, IIT Delhi is ranked among the top. We are also helping to set up a campus in Abu Dhabi. We have world-class faculty, who continue to get recognitions from within India and abroad. We have excellent experimental facilities in IIT Delhi, and leading research workers in various advanced research areas in the engineering sciences and others, ranging from high-technology fields to pure sciences, and also social sciences, along with the interaction of the latter with science and technology”.

The institute made significant strides in enhancing its research infrastructure to support cutting-edge research across various disciplines, and acquired new instruments like:

1. Fast Protein Liquid Chromatography — Department of Chemical Engineering

2. Laser Writer for Lithography — Department of Chemical Engineering

3. A GPU Computing Cluster + Storage Server for Genome India Project — Department of Biotechnology and Biochemical Engineering.

4. A high-intensity X-Ray Diffraction System with robotics for biomolecular structure determination and UV microscope accessories in the Kusuma School of Biological Sciences.

These instruments are expected to enhance the research capabilities and facilitate advanced studies and experiments in the respective departments at IIT Delhi.”

(Photo: Prof. Rangan Banerjee, Director, IIT Delhi)

During the 54th convocation ceremony, graduates of first batch of M.Tech. in Electric Mobility, Interdisciplinary M. Tech. in Cyber Security, Masters in Public Policy, Master of Science in Research (MSR) in Materials Science and Engineering and Joint PhD programme with the University of Queensland, Australia, were awarded degrees.

Prof. Rangan Banerjee, Director, IIT Delhi, said, “585 women students are being awarded degrees in this convocation.  This is 25% of the total – much better than in the past. In this Convocation, we have the first four PhD graduates on the Joint PhD programme of the University of Queensland-IIT Delhi Academy of Research (UQIDAR). We are also awarding degrees to 15 international students from Finland, Sierra Leone, Russia, Bangladesh, Rwanda, Sudan, Nepal, Bhutan and Ethiopia in the 54^th Convocation.

We continued on our pathway to achieve excellence in education and research, and made efforts to enhance the societal impact of our work. As an Institution of Eminence, we continued to attract the best students from across the country. We have extremely high selectivity at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, with only a small percentage of applicants—less than 1%—being successful in getting admission. We are a preferred destination from students across the country.

The Institute is in the midst of a curriculum review — the curriculum review committee had discussions with student and academic units to incorporate flexibility, sustainability, and multidisciplinarity in the curriculum. The next stage is reworking the individual curriculum, and getting extensive external feedback; we hope to have the new curriculum introduced in 2024. We have been supporting national efforts for the implementation of the New Education Policy (NEP), as well.”  

At the Convocation ceremony, the Institute also honoured its esteemed alumni with the prestigious Alumni Awards 2023.

(Prof. Aarti Gupta)

(Dr. Gurtej S Sandhu)

(Dr. Nalin Shinghal)

(Dr. Ananth Govind Rajan)

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