IIT Bombay Organizes Convocation in Virtual Reality Mode, Awards Medals and Degrees to Virtual Avatars of Students

The Indian Institute of Bombay held its 58th annual convocation ceremony in virtual reality mode due to the coronavirus pandemic on 23 August.

This comes months after IIT Bombay became the first major institute to scrap conventional lectures this year to contain the spread of coronavirus.

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Though students could not congregate for the convocation, they were seen along with the guests in their ‘digital avatars’ on a virtual stage. For the first time in its 62-year history, the institute gave away medals, awards and degrees to the virtual avatars of the students on the day of the convocation.

The institute said that it did not wish to deprive its students of the sense of achievement and pride of graduating from the premier engineering institute.

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Professor D Haldane, a British-born physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2016, was the chief guest. “There is a lesson for everyone involved in research,” he said during the nearly two-hour-long event, which was streamed live.

Guest of Honour Stephen A Schwarzman, a world-renowned investor and philanthropist, said, “India is poised to stake its claim as one of the world’s great innovation hubs.” The guests addressed the students virtually.