‘Innovation should be our mantra to govern the economy’
   Date :02-Dec-2021

Dr K Sivan _1  
 
 
 
Staff Reporter :
 
RAIPUR,
 
The triad of startups, incubators and academia play a major role in shaping self-reliant India, stated secretary of Department of Space; chairman of Space Commission and chairman of Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) Dr K Sivan, elaborating that huge investments, revolutionary innovations and building technological competence is important to strengthen our manufacture, research and development. Sivan stated this while addressing the 12th convocation ceremony of National Institute of Technology (NIT) Raipur virtually on Wednesday as chief guest. “Innovation should be our mantra to govern the economy. There are immense opportunities for those who want to become innovators and startup entrepreneurs and the main areas they need to concentrate on are aerospace, defence, cyber security and IT among many others.
 
Space business ventures are also sprouting through startups. For us to be successful we need to follow the multidisciplinary approach,” said Sivan. It is the need of the hour to create a robust national innovation ecosystem as it will help to convert high risk operations in space business to big opportunities, pointed the ISRO chairman. He further motivated the graduating batch and said, “we should do our best to place India among the top scientific and economic powers of the world.” On the occasion, degrees and medals were presented to the undergraduate, postgraduate and PhD scholars. A total of 1129 students including 832 graduates, 222 postgraduates and 75 PhDs were conferred with the degrees wherein 51 medals were given out including 28 Gold and 23 Silver Medals. The degrees of PhD, MTech, MCA and BTech were conferred virtually. This was followed by the medal distribution in which Harshita Sharma of CSE, the overall BTech topper with a CPI of 9.99 was conferred upon with the Gold Medal. According to the information received, the event kicked off with the academic procession comprising Dr A M Rawani, director and acting chairman, BoG; Dr Shrish Verma, dean (Academics); registrar Dr Arif Khan, board of governors and other senate members registered their presence in the convocation. On the occasion, Dr Rawani presented the annual institute report along with the college’s future perspective.
 
Moreover, Dr Rawani shared some significant accomplishments of NIT Raipur in the year 2021: The institute secured 64th rank under Engineering Category in the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) 2021 released by the Ministry of Education, Government of India. Various changes were made in the curriculum to emphasise the Institute’s vision of academic flexibility, research, learning centric approach, entrepreneurship and innovation. He further enlightened everyone about the commitment of the institute to develop an eco-friendly campus and threw light on the various facilities available in the campus along with the multifarious amenities like the Career Development Centre (CDC) and Central Computer Centre (CCC) which have state-of-art equipment. He also fore grounded the Modernization of infrastructure facilities in the Institute and the endeavours to extend its expertise to help various organizations to solve their technical problems and establish mutually beneficial partnerships. He also apprised that a total of 102 companies conducted campus placement drives virtually in which 463 UG and 58 PG students were selected.