A youngster from Boring Road received the President of India gold medal at the IIT convocation on Sunday where 275 students received their degrees.

Shubham, topper in the computer science and engineering department, was elated. The President of India gold medal is awarded to an outgoing BTech student who is adjudged the academically best for having the highest average marks in all eight semesters.

"Studying four years at IIT-Patna has been an experience," said Shubham, whose parents were at the convocation ceremony on the sprawling Bihta campus, 40km west of Patna. "The institute focuses on all-round development."

The city boy gave his matriculation examination from DPS-Patna and moved to Hans Raj College in Delhi for Class XII. After clearing the IIT entrance examination, he came back home with a seat at IIT-Patna.

He has already been placed with software company Arista Networks in Hyderabad.

The other medal gold medal in BTech - the "Director gold medal" - went to Divya Garg from Moradabad in Uttar Pradesh for being the best all-rounder.

She said: "I have been placed with Napier Healthcare. I will work for a few years and then pursue higher studies."

The institute's gold medal for MTech went to mechanical engineering student Tapan Sood. Thirteen other students received silver medals.

All of them were among the 275 students who received their degrees - 177 from five BTech branches, 70 from eight MTech branches and 28 PHD scholars - at the fifth annual convocation ceremony.

Chief guest Babasaheb Kalyani, the institute chairman and managing director of Bharat Forge Limited, told the students over through videoconference to "become agents of positive change and development", while director Pushpak Bhattacharyya read out the institute's report card.

Also present at the ceremony were IIM-Lucknow director Ajit Prasad, Massachusetts Institute of Technology's associate dean of digital learning M.S. Vijay Kumar and HCL founder Ajai Chowdhry, the chairman of the board of governors of IIT-Patna.