The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bhubaneswar, which has completely shifted to its 850-acre sprawling new campus in Argul, Jatani, would hold its 7th Annual Convocation on Saturday.

Secretary, Department of Science and Technology, Government of India Prof Ashutosh Sharma would attend the event as chief guest while Chairman, Board of Governors of IIT Bhubaneswar Pankaj Ramanbhai Patel would preside over the function and Director of the institute Prof RV Raj Kumar would place his report and award the degrees to the successful students.

The premier institute would confer degrees to 19 PhD, 91 MTech, 69 MSc and 162 BTech students. As this year the decennial year of the institute fully operational from the permanent campus and this year's convocation is the proud moment for its graduating students, their parents, faculty members, staff members and the administration. Besides the degrees, the President of India Gold Medal, Director's Gold Medal and Silver Medals for best academic performance would be given.

Currently the institute has 1,765 students (BTech 1,101, MTech 266, MSC 142, PhD 256 ) and 129 fulltime faculty members. The institute has grown to have seven schools including three recently updated Mineral, Metrology and Material Science, School of Humanities and Social Science besides School of Earth, Ocean and Climate Sciences.

"Last year, we earned Rs 60 crore by submitting 75 research projects from various agencies; and we are working in various other projects now," said the Director One of the great achievements of the institute is the setting up a Centre of Excellence on Virtual Reality and Argumentative Reality with initial contribution from Sushmita Bagchi and Subrat Bagchi of Rs 2 5 crore. Already, half a dozen projects on virtual reality have started; and the institute is encouraging others to have new startups and incubations from here or elsewhere.