THE FIFTH convocation of the Indian Institute of Information Technology, Allahabad (IIIT-A) will be held at its Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Information Technology, Amethi Campus on Wednesday, August 19. Rahul Gandhi, Member of Parliament, Amethi, will deliver the convocation address as chief guest of the ceremony. The Director of IIIT-A, Dr MD Tiwari said here on Sunday (August 16), that degrees would be conferred on 151 engineering graduates. The master's degrees would be awarded to 166 students, including 63 MTech, 52 MBA (IT) and 51 MSCLIS students in various branches of engineering. Besides, one student Aarti Chamoli would be awarded a doctorate degree, Dr Tiwari said.

Besides the 12 existing institutes and three memorial medals, Dr Tiwari said three new gold medals were being introduced in this year's convocation. The Chairman's Gold Medal will be given to Mukesh Chandra Pant, MTech (Intelligence System), Nobel Laureate Prof Claude Cohen Tannoudji Gold Medal to Preetika Shukla B Tech and Prof Joelle Cohen Tannoudji Gold Medal to Nitya Singh of MTech (Bioinformatics).

The Institute medals in BTech(IT) for the academic session July 2005 to June 2009, will be given to Pawandeep Singh - gold, Honey Kansal - silver and Preetika Shukla bronze. gold medal for MTech (IT) session July 2007 to June 2009) will be awarded to Majgaonkar Mudassar Dildar, Mukesh Chandra Pant - silver and Nitya Singh with bronze. Students recommended for award of Institute Medals Academic in (MBA IT) include Neha Gupta- gold, Dhawal Dhal - silver and Sunita - bronze while MSCLIS students include Shuchi Chandra - gold, Aditya Kishore Saxena - silver and Alka Kushwaha - bronze.

Shashank Varma Memorial gold medal - 2009 will be accorded to Shailendra Upadhyay, Pt Yadu Nath Tiwari Memorial gold medal - 2009 to Chhavi Singh and Megha Goyal Memorial gold medal - 2009 to Pooja Jha. Meanwhile, preparations are in full swing in order to organise a grand academic ceremony. A huge pandal is being erected at RGIIT-Amethi campus with a capacity of over 1300 persons. Dozens of buses will leave from Jhalwa as well as the Nehru Science Centre, Allahabad University on August 19 morning to the convocation ground. A number of academicians from different quarters of the country are likely to take part in the fifth convocation. It may be mentioned that four years back in April, 2005, the foundation stone of the RGIIT-A campus was laid by Rahul Gandhi in the presence of the then HRD Minister Arjun Singh with a strength of 60 students. The first batch of RGIIT-A successfully passed out this year and have been placed.