The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras will hold its 57th convocation in a ‘mixed reality’ mode. The pandemic has forced all the institutes to hold their convocations virtually. Earlier, IIT-Bombay and IIT-Guwahati have also held virtual convocations where avatars of students received degrees from avatars of dignitaries while the rest of the speeches were held via video conferencing platforms.

Nobel Laureate Dr David J Gross will be the chief guest of the event. He is also chancellor’s chair of theoretical physics at the University of California. The convocation will be held on Sunday. At the event, Bhaskar Ramamurthi, director, IIT-Madras will present the annual report of the institute. IIT-Madras is the top-ranking IIT as per the Ministry of Education’s NIRF rankings.

Currently, the campus is closed due to the pandemic and classes are being held digitally due to the pandemic. The new batch too is seeking admission to IITs via JEE Advanced score and counselling sessions. During the pandemic, the IIT-Madras has also launched several new courses that are offered through online mode.

Recently, the institute’s Digital Skills Academy partnered with Bengaluru-based ArthaVidhya to offer a new online course on the business accounting process. The course is certified by NASSCOM and was designed as per the job roles in IT- ITES sectors.

Earlier while virtually addressing students at the 22nd Convocation of IIT-Guwahati, Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi had said, “Convocation is a special day for every student. But this year, it is a different experience for them in the time of the pandemic. The pandemic has changed the way convocation is conducted. But still it is as special as it was before.” Congratulating the institute for the innovation, the PM had said, it was the time and efforts towards being “future-fit and future-ready”.