In his address, Director Prof A. K. Chaturvedi shared his thoughts on the importance of Foundation Day and how the current situation with the pandemic impacted its celebration.

He spoke about how on this day in 1847, Thomason College of Engineering was founded by James Thomason and on the same day in 1948, it was established as University of Roorkee. Each year on this day there are other celebrations also held like this year would have been the Golden Jubilee for the 1970 batch, which had to be postponed to be next year due to pandemic.

He congratulated the Distinguished Alumni for 2020 (please see below) and acknowledged previous distinguished alumni.

He talked about the importance of improving external perceptions of the institute and the efforts focused on it like external assistance to disseminate information about research of faculty and students as well as schemes for alumni to streamline alumni support and improving Alumni database.

Since government efforts are not adequate to sustain excellence at institutes like IIT Roorkee, alumni initiatives are needed like some that he mentioned were Drone Research Institute by 1994 batch, IIT Roorkee Foundation setup in USA, and online alumni mentorship portal by Kiran Panesar in USA.

He mentioned that there are many ways for alumni and supporters participate in these schemes, some that are used to memorialize with named awards or chairs as well.

Shri R. S. Pawar (Chairman NIIT Limited) spoke about "Century of the mind". He spoke about how the industrial revolution transformed into the information with the invention of transistor in 1950s. This change from machine being the center of the system to "mind" becoming the center in information age was facilitated by the change from atoms to information stored in atoms (bits). He explained how this impacts the training, its measurement and the opportunities that can be leveraged by the faculty and students in this "Century of the mind".

Shri B. V. R. Reddy, Chairman Board of Governors, spoke about how technology through digital transformation is changing education.

In their acceptance for Distinguished Young Alumnus Awards of 2020, the recipients Aarti Gill, Rahul Sharma, and Sachin Gupta shared their experience of how IIT Roorkee shaped them as the leaders exceling in their fields as well as lessons to the students, who would soon be walking in their footsteps.

They shared how the experience outside the class with different clubs and other organizational opportunities in technical and cultural events helped them establish the foundation for entrepreneurship. It also gave them and their ventures a network of peers, alumni and mentors from Roorkee network.

Please click here to see details of Distinguished Young Alumnus Awards of 2020 on IIT Roorkee's site. 

In his acceptance for Distinguished Alumnus Awards of 2020, Prof. S. C. Handa talked about the importance of associating with and supporting social programs like the Roorkee School of Deaf, now called Anushruti. Through the school founded by him, education to deaf boys and girls has improved their career and family life through better jobs, businesses and marriages. He talked about the many difficulties and how the support from institute, faculty and students helped address these. This program has expanded with spin-offs, and programs with MHRD. He expressed his thanks to Prof N.C.Mathur for agreeing to proposal for the Roorkee school for the Deaf, and many other friends, professors at Roorkee, esp his wife, Kiran for her support all through this project. 

The event concluded with the vote of thanks by Prof. Manoranjan Parida, Deputy Director, IIT Roorkee.