BITS students told to dream high and act with precision
If you dream high and act with planning and precision, you can do wonders for the society, said scientist Dr Tessy Thomas at the convocation ceremony of the Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani.
Thomas, the project director for Agni-IV missile in the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), was the chief guest on the occasion.
In her address, she urged the graduating students to create bridges between the government and citizenry through start-ups or public-private partnerships and help the government in combating the challenges in the domain of health, education, environment among others, which the government cannot resolve alone.
Dwelling on statistics, BITS Pilani vice-chancellor Prof Souvik Bhattacharyya said 3,452 students will be graduating from the four campuses of BITS — Pilani, Goa, Hyderabad and Dubai–during 2016-17. Of these, 2,377 are undergraduates, 420 postgraduates, 543 are students of dual-degree programme and 112 from the PhD programme.
Of the total 3,452, more than 25% or 879 are female students. The number of students graduating from Pilani was 1,372.
Addressing the students, Bhattacharyya said, “I want you all to be secure professionally, and have a good life, but at the same time you must remain hungry, remain passionate, and also do something good for the fellow citizens and society at large.”
Prof Santanu Chaudhary, director CSIR-CEERI Pilani, who was the guest of honour on the occasion, quoted Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple, and told the students to begin the adventure for something new instead of treading a path followed by the majority.
“Great things in the world have been the outcome of imaginations,” he said.
Prof Govindan Rangarajan, Prof Narayana R Aluru, Harish Bhat, Raghu Rajagopal and Hari Menon were conferred with distinguished alumnus award.
BITS Pilani was recently placed between 181 and 190 in the Times Higher Education Asia University Rankings, Bhattacharyya said. The institute was also among the 20 institutes from India that secured a place in the QS World University Rankings, he added.