Space scientist K. Radhakrishnan said “knowing” and “doing” are important but “being” what you are makes a difference in life.

Speaking at the 21st convocation of IIT Guwahati here on Wednesday, he said, “Amidst your pursuit for exciting scientific and technologicalpursuits, enterprising business endeavours and entrepreneurial excellence, you should ponder on the avenues available to contribute towards the nation and humanity at large. Our conviction about our life and its purpose and our value system would help us to perform duty. You hold the key to leap forward or even to leap-frog to make impossible into possible. You must have a dream and mission which you should able to fulfil and ensure that the life you had in the planet Earth had a purpose.”

“Every one of us must have a dream of the future India, a nation of pre-eminence in the global economy and a level of leadership in science and technology that would propel India through that growth curve,” he added.

Altogether 1,352 students, including 570 BTech, 45 bachelor of design (BDes or BDesign), 30 MA, 119 MSc, 322 MTech, 24 MDesign, 10 researchers and 232 PhD, received their degrees from IIT Guwahati director Gautam Biswas.

Talking about the Northeast, he said, “Lot of things needs to be done in order to bring development to the northeast region and remote sensing is one of the vehicles of communication and also to understand the climate, environment and handling nature disaster especially in this region. IIT Guwahati and Isro signed an MoU recently to set up a space technology cell (STC) at the institute, which is first of its kind in the Northeast and this collaborative move can bring developments in this region.”

In the director’s report for 2018-19, Biswas said the institute ranked 7th among the engineering institutions of India and ranked ninth among all the universities and institutions in the country.

The institution also ranked second in the 2018 Swachh campus ranking of higher educational institutions.

“Advancements of science, technology and social sciences are the epicentre of the advancements of the country. Knowledge is recognised as a key resource for achieving economic growth and social development. As a society, India has traditionally valued and nurtured the knowledge building activity. Knowledge rewards ideas, irrespective of where they originate and reside,” he said.