By TN Education Desk

Copyright timesnownews

Every year, lakhs of students appear for one of the toughest engineering entrance exams of the world, JEE Main and JEE Advanced. Students prepare for at least two years to crack these tough and competitive exams, only to bag admission in one of the top IITs of the country. Their journey doesn’t end here, they then spend years in these government institutes pursuing their engineering degrees. In the end, they are awarded with a degree in a formal convocation ceremony. But this year, for some IIT students, the cherry on the cake were the memories they made during this ceremony. This year, the Director of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Ropar, Professor Rajeev Ahuja, won hearts of students after he happily posed with graduating students in GenZ style. The 60-year-old professor quickly went viral on social media platforms such as Instagram, ‘X’, Reddit, YouTube, and more for being a ‘Pookie professor’. It all started when students started approaching the stage to collect their degrees, but decided to ditch the traditional pose, and instead adopted more GenZ poses such as Korean hearts, hand hearts, dab pose, victory sign and much more. Students approached the ‘Pookie Director’ in their own style, and the Director happily joined them in a similar pose for the formal convocation picture. In one of the videos, he was even seen attempting Lionel Messi’s slow-mo walk among other poses, just to make his graduating batch happy. He was seen wearing a white kurta and yellow graduation sash. IIT graduations are typically formal affairs, with students walking up the stage to receive their degrees from the Director in a rehearsed, solemn manner. This time, however, IIT Ropar shook things up. Graduates strode onto the stage with big smiles and pre-planned poses, embracing a lighter, more playful vibe. Even the Director joined in, attempting some Gen Z-style poses, managing most with good humor despite a few struggles. Ahuja was earlier teaching at Uppsala University, Sweden. He was also holding the additional charge of Director of IIT Guwahati, India from Nov. 2023 to May 2024.Interestingly, he is one of the most highly cited researchers as well as top 5 materials Scientist in Sweden and India. He earned his PhD degree from IIT Roorkee in 1992, after which he joined Uppsala University as a post-doctoral fellow. He became Professor in 2007 at Uppsala University, Sweden.