It is tough to bag a seat of one’s choice in an IIT and tougher still to maintain that edge till graduation.
Giridhar Sriraman, a resident of Nanganallur, just a few km from the Indian Institute of Technology - Madras, completed a dual degree in Computer Science and Engineering and Electrical Engineering this year.
On Friday, Mr. Sriraman was awarded the best all-round proficiency in curricular and extra-curricular activities prize for 2018. He also won the best all-round performance Motorola prize. Mr. Sriraman is now an assistant manager in ITC’s Guntur office.
The President of India prize went to Rahul Kejriwal, a B. Tech. dual degree graduate in CSE. Mr. Kejriwal also won the Bharat Ratna M. Visvesvaraya memorial prize and the B. Ravichandran memorial prize.
A native of Rajasthan, he grew up in Kolkata and is now employed in the Microsoft India Development Centre, Hyderabad. Pradeep Natarajan won the prize for highest CGPA in dual degree and in chemical engineering and Talatiparth Ajitbhai won the best all-round proficiency prize for B. Tech.
They were among the 1,476 graduands who received their degrees in person.
A total of 1,855 students were awarded 2,267 degrees at the 55th convocation of the IIT-M on Friday.
Development model
Chief guest Rajiv Kumar, Vice- Chairman of Niti Aayog, said the country must develop a model of development that will “play to our strengths of innovation, entrepreneurship and large domestic markets and address our weaknesses, take cognizance of the present inequalities and our environment.”
IIT-M Director Bhaskar Ramamurthi said this year six upgrade paths to M. Tech. degree in computational engineering, data science, energy systems and robotics were launched.
IIT-M Chairman, Board of Governors Pawan Goenka advised the graduands to focus on profession, passion and purpose.