IIT Kanpur Convocation: 1,360 students receive blockchain-based digital degrees

NEW DELHI: The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur celebrated its 55th convocation today, June 29, 2022, with a total of 1,360 students receiving their blockchain-based digital degrees. About 51 categories of prizes and medals were also given to the students during the IIT Kanpur convocation event. Devi Prasad Shetty, founder and chairperson of Narayana Health invited as the chief guest.

Out of the 1,360 students, as many as 116 students were PhD scholars and 10 are from MTech PhD. As many as 144 MTech students and 556 BTech students received their degrees. 53 MBA graduates, 14 MDes students, 25 MS students, 40 PGPEX-VLFM students, 144 MSc students, 24 double major students, 108 dual degree students, 21 MS-PD students, and 105 BS students received their degrees. Degrees were awarded to the IIT Kanpur students by the chairperson, and senate during the event.

The blockchain degree initiative at IIT Kanpur was inaugurated by prime minister Narendra Modi in 2021. It was a technology developed by IIT Kanpur incubated company CRUBN, under the National Blockchain Project. “With the widespread digitalisation of processes and service delivery, it is important to promote online verification of degrees and other educational certificates. To make this process seamless, secure, and privacy-preserving, our team CRUBN at IIT Kanpur has developed a solution using blockchain and self-sovereign identity (SSI), which allows students to manage and store their digital degrees as verifiable credentials in digital wallets installed on their devices. These credentials cannot be forged, are globally verifiable, selectively disclosable, and sensitive to user content. Also, it addresses global privacy and security concerns and upholds the underlying principles of the envisioned data protection bill,” said Manindra Agrawal, one of the coordinators of the National Blockchain Project said. The students can access the digital degrees through an app named Indisi Wallet.

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As many as 21 students were awarded the Outstanding PhD Thesis Award. The President’s Gold Medal was won by Shashwat Gupta from the computer science and engineering department, and the director’s Gold Medal for the 4-year undergraduate programme was conferred to Priydarshi Singh from the aerospace engineering department. The director’s gold medal for the 5-year UG programme was conferred to Prateek Yadav from the mechanical engineering department. Atin Vikram Singh from the electrical engineering department won the Ratan Swarup Memorial Prize, and Dr Rupesh R Chafle from the materials science and engineering (MSE) department won the Dr Shankar Dayal Sharma Medal.

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The chief guest, Shetty, is a renowned cardiac surgeon, entrepreneur, and philanthropist who is known for his ideas and reforms in the health sector. He is a Padma Bhushan and Padma Shri awardee. He had also won awards such as The Economist Innovation Award, and the Nikkei Asia Prize for Economic and Business Innovation. The convocation was presided over by Radhakrishnan K Koppillil, chairman of IIT Kanpur's board of governors.