IIT Bombay 60th Convocation 2022: 449 PhD degrees awarded this year; highest ever

NEW DELHI: The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay on Saturday held its 60th convocation ceremony at its campus. IIT Bombay, in the past two years, had held its convocation in virtual reality mode and this is the first physical convocation ceremony since then.

Kumar Mangalam Birla, Chairman, Aditya Birla Group was the chief guest and delivered the convocation address.

IIT Bombay director Subhasis Chaudhuri revealed that this academic year, a total of 2,835 degrees will be awarded to 2,585 recipients. Total number of PhD degrees awarded this year is 449. This is the first time that any Indian academic institute has produced more than 400 PhD graduates in a year – a major milestone for STEM education in India, the institute said.

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This year, four students were presented the Gold medals for their exemplary performance. The ‘President of India Medal’ was bestowed on Mohammad Ali Rehan, a (BTech) student from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering.

The ‘Institute Gold Medal (2020-21)’ was awarded to Koustav Jana, a (dual degree) student from the Department of Electrical Engineering, the ‘Institute Gold Medal (2021-22)’ was awarded to Aryaman Maithani, a (BS) student from the Department of Mathematics, and the ‘Dr. Shankar Dayal Sharma Gold Medal’ was conferred on Shreya Pathak, a (BTech) student from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. Additionally, many more students were presented with gold medals sponsored by donors.

The degrees include 206 PhD, 34 (MTech/ MPhil+PhD), 24 Dual Degree (MSc+PhD), 3 MS (by research), 700 MTech, 53 MDes, 14 Dual Degree (BDes+MDes), 23 MPhil, 115 MBA, 1 EMBA, 17 MPP, 204 two-year MSc, 326 Dual Degree (BTech+MTech), 654 BTech Degrees, 50 Interdisciplinary Dual Degrees (BTech/ BS+MTech/ MSc), 6 five-year Integrated MSc, 6 Dual Degrees (BS+MSc), 48 BS, 14 BDes, and 24 PDGIIT.

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This year, IIT Bombay granted 25 joint PhD’s along with Monash University. Margaret Gardner, President and the Vice-Chancellor of Monash University conferred the joint degrees in person.

Moreover, this year, 35 research scholars have been selected for the award of ‘Naik and Rastogi Award for Excellence in PhD Thesis’ for the year 2020-22.

The IIT Bombay convocation was presided over by the Chairperson, Board of Governors (BoG) of IIT Bombay, Sharad Saraf in the presence of the Institute Director Subhasis Chaudhuri. Saraf is the first IIT Bombay alumnus to become the Chairperson of the Board of Governors at the Institute.