Энэтхэгийн Технологийн Институт Мадрас

The Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT-Madras or IIT-M) is a public research university and technical institute located in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. It is recognized as an Institute of Eminence. It has also ranked first nationally in engineering and overall categories by the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) for many years.

As an Indian Institute of Technology, IIT Madras is also recognized as an Institute of National Importance by the Government of India. Founded in 1959 with technical, academic and financial assistance from the government of West Germany, IITM was the third Indian Institute of Technology to be established.

History

In 1956, the West German Government rendered technical assistance to establish a state-of-the-art engineering institute in India. Soon, the first Indo-German agreement was signed in Bonn, West Germany, in 1959 for the establishment of the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras (now Chennai). IIT Madras was started with technical, academic and financial assistance from the Government of West Germany. It was at the time the most significant international educational project sponsored by the Federal Republic of Germany. As part of the agreement, the West German government committed to providing various forms of assistance for the development of the institute in Madras:

A workshop, laboratory equipment, and a library whose total value does not exceed ₹1.8 crore (equivalent to ₹166 crores or $20 million in 2024) .

• Twenty German professors to serve at the institute for a period of four to five years
• Four German foremen for the workshops of the institute for two years
• Facilities for the training of twenty Indian teachers in German institutions

This has led to several collaborative research efforts with universities and institutions in Germany over the years. Although official support from the German government has ended, several research efforts involving the DAAD programme and Humboldt Fellowships still exist.

The Indian Institute of Technology, Madras started functioning with the first batch of 120 students being admitted in July 1959 to the first year of the Engineering Course. The institute was inaugurated in 1959, by the then Union Minister for Scientific Research and Cultural Affairs. The first batch had an overall strength of 120 students from across India. In 1961, the IITs were declared to be Institutes of National Importance. The first convocation ceremony was held on 11 July 1964, with Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, then the president of India, delivering the convocation address and awarding the degrees to the inaugural batch of students. The institute got its first women students in the BTech batch of 1966. IIT Madras celebrated its Golden Jubilee in 2009, and its Diamond Jubilee in 2019.

Campus

The main entrance of IIT Madras is on Sardar Patel Road, flanked by the residential districts of Adyar and Velachery. The campus is close to the Raj Bhavan, the official residence of the Governor of Tamil Nadu. Other entrances are located in Velachery (near Anna Garden MTC bus stop, Velachery Main Road), Gandhi Road and Taramani gate (close to Ascendas Tech Park).

Two parallel roads, Bonn Avenue and Delhi Avenue, cut through the faculty residential area before they meet at the Gajendra Circle, near the Administrative Block. Buses regularly ply between the Main Gate, Gajendra Circle, the Academic Zone, and the Hostel Zone.

Student hostels

Most students at IIT Madras reside in student hostels, where extracurricular activities complement the academic routine. The campus has 21 hostels, of which six —Sabarmati, Sarayu, Sharavati, Swarnamukhi, and the convertible Tunga-Bhadra—are currently exclusively for women. In earlier times, each hostel had attached dining facilities, but all of them have been closed down starting around 2010. Dining facilities are provided in three centralised halls: Nilgiri, Vindhya and Himalaya. Recently (2023), a new mess has been opened in the old Cauvery hostel mess for Jain food. Students are assigned to hostels upon matriculation, where they usually reside for the entire duration of their course of study.

The hostels of IITM are:

Mandakini is nine storeyed, Sindhu, Pampa, Mahanadhi and Tamiraparani are seven-storeyed, whereas all the other hostels are three or four-storeyed. The latter four hostels can accommodate more than 1,200 students. The older hostels were all three-storeyed till the early 2000s, when extra rooms were added. An additional new floor in the three-storeyed hostels, which generally house the undergraduate students, and a new block in place of the mess halls of these hostels have been constructed to accommodate the increased intake of students. These new blocks could be used as entrances for these hostels. As of 2022, the old Mandakini has been demolished and a new multi-storey block opened, with provision to accommodate approximately 1200 students.

Facilities

IIT Madras provides residential accommodation for its students, faculty, administrative and supporting staff, and their families. The residential houses employ private caterers. The self-contained campus includes two schools (Vanavani and Kendriya Vidyalaya), three temples (Jalakanteshwara, Durga Peliamman and Ganapathi), three bank branches (SBI, ICICI, Canara Bank), a hospital, shopping centres, food shops, a gym, sleeping room and cricket, football, hockey and badminton stadiums.

Organisation and administration

Governance

IIT Madras is an autonomous statutory organisation functioning within the Institutes of Technology Act. The twenty-three IITs are administered centrally by the IIT Council, an apex body established by the Government of India. The Minister of Human Resources and Development is the chairman of the council. Each institute has a board of governors responsible for its administration and control. The finance committee advises on matters of financial policy, while the Building and Works Committee advises on buildings and infrastructure.

The Senate comprises all professors of the institute and decides its academic policy. It controls and approves the curriculum, courses, examinations, and results. It appoints committees to examine specific academic matters. The director of the institute serves as the chairman of the Senate. The current director (appointed in 2022) is Kamakoti Veezhinathan, who obtained his Ph.D. and M.S in CSE from IIT Madras. He was conferred the Padma Shri award in 2026 January.

Three Senate Sub-Committees – The Board of Academic Research, The Board of Academic Courses and The Board of Students – help in academic administration and the operations of the institute. The Board of Industrial Consultancy and Sponsored Research addresses industrial consultancy, and the Library Advisory Committee oversees library matters.

Departments

• IIT Madras has the following departments
• Aerospace Engineering
• Applied Mechanics and Biomedical Engineering
• Biotechnology (Bhupat and Jyoti Mehta School of Biosciences)
• Chemical Engineering
• Chemistry
• Civil Engineering
• Computer Science and Engineering (CSE)
• Data Science and Artificial Intelligence
• Electrical Engineering (EE)
• Engineering Design
• Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS)
• Management Studies (DoMS)
• Mathematics (MA)
• Mechanical Engineering (ME)
• Medical Science and Technology (MST)
• Metallurgical and Materials Engineering
• Ocean Engineering
• Physics

Academics

IIT Madras offers undergraduate, postgraduate and research degrees across 18 disciplines in Engineering, Science, Humanities and Management. About 600 faculty belonging to science and engineering departments and centres of the institute are engaged in teaching, research and industrial consultancy.

The institute has 18 academic departments and advanced research centres across disciplines of engineering and pure sciences, with nearly 100 laboratories. The academic calendar is organised around the semester. Each semester provides a minimum of seventy days of instruction in English. Students are evaluated continuously throughout the semester. The faculty does evaluation, a consequence of the autonomous status granted to the institute. Research work is evaluated based on the review thesis by peer examiners, both from within the country and abroad. The Senate, the highest academic body within the institute prepare ordinances that govern the academic programme of study.

IITM is also gearing up to launch a new and completely online BEd degree programme in Maths and Computing to improve maths teaching in schools, as said by the director at the G20 seminar at IIT Madras.

Admission tests

For the undergraduate curriculum, admission to the BTech and Dual Degree (BS + MS or BTech + MTech) programme is done through the Joint Entrance Examination – Advanced (JEE-Advanced). IIT Madras was the organising institute of JEE Advanced in 2017 and 2024.

However, admissions to the BS Chemistry and BS Medical Sciences and Engineering (MSE) courses are not done through JEE Advanced but are done from a separate merit list made based on the rank obtained in IAT, upon separate registration on the IITM website.

Admissions to the 4-years hybrid BS degree programmes for Data Science and Applications and Electronic Systems are taken through 2 channels: JEE-based entry (students clearing cutoff of JEE(Main) to be eligible to write JEE(Advanced) are eligible for direct entry to this course); Regular Entry through Qualifier Exam which is their entrance test, any student from any background and even professionals can sit in this test.

In 2025, IIT Madras introduced a new admission process for undergraduate programs, allowing students who have excelled in national and international Olympiads to secure seats without a JEE score. Moreover, they have also introduced a sports quota and fine arts and cultural excellence quota through which a candidate with national level achievements in various sports and cultural fields can apply for admission, after having qualified for JEE advanced.

Rankings

IIT Madras was ranked 170th in the QS World University Rankings 2027, an improvement of ten places from the previous year.

Internationally, IIT Madras was ranked 170th in the QS World University Rankings 2027. It was ranked 701–800 in the world by the Academic Ranking of World Universities of 2022.

IIT Madras was ranked 1st in the overall category for the 7th consecutive year, 2nd among research institutions, and 1st among engineering colleges for the 10th consecutive year by the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) in 2025. It also secured the 1st rank in the Innovation and Sustainability Development Goals (SDG) categories in NIRF 2025.

IIT Madras BS in Data Science won Silver in the Wharton (University of Pennsylvania) – QS Reimagine Education Awards.

Research

Industrial Consultancy

Through industrial consultancy, faculty and staff undertake industry assignments that may include project design, testing and evaluation, or training in new areas of industrial development. Industries and organisations like the Indian Ordnance Factories

National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL)

To improve the quality of higher education in India, IIT Madras came up with an initiative called NPTEL (National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning) in the year 2003. As per this initiative, all the IITs, along with the IISc Bangalore would come up with a series of video lecture-based courses across all the streams of engineering.

IITM Research Park

IITM Research Park is India's first university-based research park. The Research Park functions to promote innovation in established companies and provide a nurturing ecosystem to startups through incubation efforts and technical infrastructure. Following its success, 50 research parks were planned as part of the Start Up India initiative of the Central Government of India. Corporate clients of IIT Madras Research Park include the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited, Saint-Gobain and Forbes Marshall. Ather Energy, Hyperverge, Gyandata and Healthcare Technology Innovation Centre(Sponsored by Department of Biotechnology, Government of India) are some of the startups and centres incubated at the Research Park. The Research Park is a prime driver for the huge number of startups incubated at IIT Madras.

Pravartak

IITM Pravartak is funded by the Department of Science and Technology, GOI, under its National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems, and it's hosted as a Technology Innovation Hub (TIH) by IIT Madras. It focuses on Technology, Entrepreneurship and Human Resource skill development through various initiatives. It provides hands-on programmes, and hybrid courses like Out of the Box Thinking in Maths, Winter School on Advanced Quantum Computing, Wireless Networks, Blockchains and others.

Bharat Semiconductor Research Centre

On 20 October 2023, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology stated that the Bharat Semiconductor Research Centre (BSRC) would be established starting in 2024, working with professionals from the industry and academic institutions. Rajeev Chandrashekhar states that BSRC will function as the Indian counterpart of the MIT Microelectronics Laboratory, Alan G. MacDiarmid NanoTech Institute, Industrial Technology Research Institute, and IMEC. The Bharat Semiconductor Research Centre will be located at IIT Madras. The centre will be established initially as an institution co-located with Semi-Conductor Laboratory, with the potential to split off into a stand-alone semiconductor research organization in the future.

Alumni and corporate relations

Initiatives and engagement

The Office of Alumni and Corporate Relations initiates, promotes, and facilitates connections among the diverse network of IIT Madras alumni as well as corporations. Through collaborations, mentorship programs, and knowledge-sharing initiatives, the office contributes to the institute's progress and goals. The office fosters alumni engagement with the institute through various initiatives such as organising reunions across batches, recognising distinguished alumni, and ensuring that alumni stay in touch with developments at IIT Madras through newsletters and regular communications. Prof. Mahesh Panchagnula currently heads it from the Dept of Applied Mechanics, IIT Madras.

Collaborations with corporations

The office has facilitated various technology-driven social impact collaborations with various corporations and corporate foundation arms, under Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in India. Partnerships with both Alumni and corporations are undertaken through the Office of Institutional Advancement, which functions as part of the Alumni and Corporate Relations office.

Modern and advanced courses

BS Degree in Data Science and Applications

• The institute launched a 4-year non-campus UG Bachelor of Science degree (BS)
• program in Data Science and Applications in
• 2020 with unique flexible exit options as per the NEP, which was earlier a
• non-campus 3-year BSc degree programme in Programming and Data Science. The
• 142-credit program consists of three levels — Foundation (32 credits), Diploma
• (54 credits), and Degree (56 credits), and a total of 34 theory courses and four project
• courses. The degree programme is currently being run in a hybrid mode, with
• content delivery in online mode and assessments done through monthly in-person

exams conducted at centres.

Notable faculties from the foundation level of the program include

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