IIT Ropar introduces Best Thesis Award during its 7th Annual Convocation
KS Diwan/ royalpatiala.in/ Rupnagar
The Indian Institute of Technology Ropar (IIT Ropar) celebrated its 7th Annual Convocation today at their permanent campus. Prof. John H. Lienhard V, PhD, PE, Professor of Water, Director, Abdul Latif Jameel World Water and Food Security Laboratory , Massachusetts Institute Of Technology, USA graced the occasion as the chief guest and delivered the convocation address. Prof. S.K. Das, Director IIT Ropar presided over the ceremony.
A total of 173 degrees were awarded this year. 103 B.Tech., 19 M.Tech., 27 M.Sc. and 24 PhD degrees were handed out to students.
First time, IIT Ropar introduced Best Thesis Award and in this category 4 students, Dr. Aru Beri (Awarded PhD in 2016), Dr. Balwinder Kaur (Awarded Degree in 2016), Dr. Harpreet Singh (Awarded Degree in 2015) and Dr. Satyajit Pramanik (Awarded Degree in 2016) were felicitated.
Devendra Pratap Yadav, Department of Computer Science & Engineering received President of India Gold Medal amongst the graduating students of B. Tech this year. The Director Gold Medal was awarded to Deepak Attri, Department of Electrical Engineering.
Institute Silver medals were given to Deepak Attri, B.Tech. Department of Electrical Engineering, Raghvendra Kumar Dwivedi, M.Tech. Mechanical Engineering, Apoorv Kushwaha, M.Sc. in Chemistry Programme, Lalit Pandey, M.Sc. in Physics Programme and Manoj Kumar, M.Sc. in Mathematics Programme.
The department wise break up of data for total students graduated in 2017
| S.no | Department | Number of Students |
| 1 | PhD | 24 |
| 2 | M.Tech. in Mechanical Engineering | 19 |
| 3 | M.Sc. | 27 |
| 4 | B.Tech. in Computer Science & Engineering | 40 |
| B.Tech. in Mechanical Engineering | 34 | |
| B. Tech. in Electrical Engineering | 29 | |
| Total | 173 | |
Addressing the students at the Convocation, Prof. S.K Das, Director, IIT Ropar said, “Today’s day completely belongs to you, the graduants. After years of hard work to get into IIT, followed by an enriching experience of being a part of IIT Ropar, today, it is truly the day for your “dream to come true.” We want to have the graduate students as our ambassadors to excel with core human values and commitment to society. In today’s connected world, this difficult task can only be accomplished by having a positive perception about IIT Ropar in the academic community. The graduant batch of this year can take this responsibility to spread the fragrance of the academic flower blooming at IIT Ropar. Let us make IIT Ropar an institute of global eminence.”
“We are happy to present degrees to 173 students this year. These students are the real stars and I would like to wish them the very best in their future endeavours.” Prof. S.K Das added.
IIT Ropar has excelled over the past year in many areas like research, student and faculty achievements and international collaborations. The Institute has also seen a remarkable growth in terms of the faculty and student strength.
During the past year, the institute’s research quality and impact can be ascertained from the average citation per paper which stands at 11.74 which is highest among all the second generation IITs as per recent Scopus data. During the current year, the faculty members and scholars of the Institute published 308 papers in high impact international journals with an H-Index of 52.
The number of PhD students on campus is increasing every year. This year too has seen a considerable increase in numbers, growing from 331 students last year to 389 this year. The current faculty to PhD student’s ratio is 1:2.5.
The Institute is proud of the various awards won by the students and faculty this year, a number of them being national awards. The foremost of them are Dr. Durba Pal, Dr. Srivastava Naidu, Dr. Puneet Goyal, Dr. Suman Kumar have won Early Career Research Award for Science & Engineering. Prof. Javed N Agrewala received the prestigious JC Bose Fellowship. Many students have received travel grants and best paper presentation awards at various national and international conferences.
In continuation to IITs Ropar’s excellent journey in research, the efforts of our doctoral students have been recognized as attested by their selection for the 2019 Global Young Scientists’ Summit in Singapore. The students who have been honored through this selection are Akrati Saxena, Anamika Chhabra, Beant Kaur, Bharat Ugale and Kamal Malhotra.
The performance of IIT Ropar in campus placements is going up continuously for the last couple of years. An overwhelming response from the industry in general and core industries in particular was evident in the case of the graduating bachelor students, resulting in 90.24% placement of our students being placed this year. More than 90.29% of Computer Science Engineering, close to 92% of Mechanical and 81.82% Electrical Engineering students have been placed through campus interviews. An average package of about 11.70 lakhs per annum was offered to the graduating bachelor students.
Addressing the graduating students Prof. John Lienhard, Director, Abdul Lateef Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab, MIT (USA) said, “I offer my heartiest congratulations to each of you for successfully crossing this stage and very best wishes for a meaningful future. I specially congratulate the medal and prize winners who have worked hard and have succeeded. I believe that Science and Engineering are essential to ensuring abundance of safe water and nutritious food. If we work within our cities or communities, we can solve the problem of having reliable and safe water. If we work together within our states and nations, we can have robust, sustainable agricultural systems to nourish all of our citizens. And if the nations of the world work together, we can control and eventually reverse climate change.”
“You are now passing from being students to being full members of society. The responsibility to solve these problems will lie with you. The responsibility to lead will lie with you as well. And I have every confidence that you-the brightest and most capable young adults-you will rise to this challenge. ”, he added.
Prof. John Lienhard also mentioned the importance of addressing basic problems of the nations like water and food. He said that, “One of the biggest problems that we will face in near-future is that of ‘water’. Availability of water will be probably the world’s biggest challenge. And India will face this faster than others. The only way out will be to recycle every drop that we use, preserve water and clean water. It would require technological breakthrough and some serious management effort.”
Established in 2008, IIT Ropar has grown to its prominence nationally and internationally through its research initiatives. This year being the 10th in its journey has offered something very special to the IIT Ropar community.
