Graduates in India Get Diplomas as Their Avatar in Virtual Reality Ceremony

The COVID-19 crisis has denied graduates around the world of the special day when they walk across the stage to receive their diploma in front of their family, friends, and fellow students. The Indian Institute of Technology Bombay found a way around this problem. Well, sorta.

IIT Bombay held a “virtual reality” convocation on Sunday where every single one of the over 2,000 graduates, along with the speaker and faculty members, were given their own personalized avatar, according to The Indian Express. As each student’s name was called, their avatar would recreate the moment where they would’ve walked up to the Institute’s director Dr. Subhasis Chaudhuri to snap a photo with their diploma, while all medal winners would still receive their medals from chief guest and 2016 Nobel Prize recipient, Professor Duncan Haldane.

“Providing a virtual reality experience to all our graduates needed not only highly innovative steps but also a tremendous effort by our professors and staff,” Dr. Chaudhuri said in a statement. “They did it for the students. Hopefully this will enthuse our graduates as well as other engineers in the country to think big and think innovatively.”