Assam governor urges students to utilize knowledge, skills to find solutions to problems of society

TEZPUR: Assam Governor Jagadish Mukhi on Friday urged students to utilize the knowledge, skills and experiences gained at Tezpur University to find solutions to the individual and collective problems of the society.

A university plays a major role in nation-building by producing students who can shoulder this responsibility, the governor said at the 20th convocation of Tezpur University. The university must play its role of disseminating knowledge, honing skills and encouraging research to enable all-round progress of the nation, the governor said in his speech which was read out in absentia by the Acting Vice Chancellor Dhruba Kumar Bhattacharya.

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The President of Indian Statistical Institute Prof Sankar Kumar Pal, the chief guest at the convocation, highlighted the emerging areas of Data Science Research. ''We are amid what is popularly called Information Revolution and living in a world of knowledge where great volume of data is constantly being generated all around us”, Pal, who is also a Member of European Academy of Sciences and Arts and National Science Chair, Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB), said.

Data Science and Machine Intelligence is a cutting-edge research area and has enormous relevance in the context of national development, he added. Bioinformatics Centre Savitribai Phule Pune University's Professor Shekhar C Mande, speaking as the Guest of Honour, said that society has many demands and universities need to continuously evolve relevant programmes and courses to meet those demands.

"I am glad to know that Tezpur University has been very proactive and responsive to these demands as it has been able to come up with several such programmes and courses", Mande added. Altogether 1,362 students were conferred degrees and diplomas of which 70 were PhDs, 873 postgraduates, 386 undergraduates, 11 PG Diplomas and 22 awarded degrees/diplomas through distance /open learning mode.