Overview

Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, or IITK is a public technical college and research university which is located in Kanpur, established in the year 1960. IIT Kanpur was one of the first institutes of the Indian Institutes of Technology. This university was created as a part of the Kanpur Indo-American Programme, or, KIAP, with the assistance of a union of nine research-based universities from the United States. IIT Kanpur is ranked 5th amongst the Engineering colleges in India. The vision of IIT Kanpur is “to create, disseminate and translate knowledge in science, engineering and allied disciplines that will best serve the society” and their mission is to “to pursue excellence in education, research and innovation”.

Academic Performance

IIT Kanpur was ranked 4th by India Today in the Engineering category in 2019, ranked 5th in Overall Ranking in 2019, ranked 2nd by EduVidya Ranking in Engineering, and is ranked in between 251 and 300 in Engineering by World University Ranking in 2020.

IIT Kanpur offers various courses for undergraduate, post-graduate, and Ph.D. degrees in the range of engineering, humanities & social sciences, science, management, design, and inter-disciplinary subjects. Courses offered by the institution are Aerospace Engineering, Biological Sciences and Bio-Engineering, Chemical Engineer, Civil Engineering, Computer Science and Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Environmental Engineering and Management, Nuclear Engineering and Technology, Nanotechnology, Science and Technology, Cognitive Science and many more.

Research and Development

IIT Kanpur has never failed to show their academic excellence. As of the year 2013, IIT Kanpur has on average 2.58 publications per faculty, average 3.32 number of Ph.D. students enrolled under each faculty, 57 patents filed in that one year, and INR 1.9 million allocated per faculty as research funding. IIT Kanpur has seen immense growth in its research and development. The number of externally funded ongoing projects has also reached some 588, with a sanctioned amount of INR 315 crores.

Notable alumni

Several significant people are affiliated with the IIT Kanpur in the important field of engineering, business, and politics, some of whom are as follows.

  • N.R. Narayana Murthy, Padma Vibhushan, co-founder of Infosys
  • H.C. Verma, Padma Shri, the Experimental Physicist
  • Prem Das Rai, Member of Parliament, Sikkim
  • Nitin Saxena, Fulkerson Prize, and  Gödel Prize winner
  • Naveen Tewari, Founder CEO of InMobi
  • Rajiv Dixit, Public speaker, social activist and promoter of Ayurveda
  • Sudhir Chowdhary, CEO & Founder of Gaia Smart Cities, Ex-President of Reliance JioInfocomm Ltd.
  • Arvind Krishna, CEO of IBM
  • Muktesh Pant, former CEO, Yum China
  • Mukesh Bansal, Founder of Myntra
  • Amitabh Thakur, IPS officer
  • Saurabh Kumar, ex-Ambassador of India to Iran
  • Sudhir Vyas, former Ambassador of India to Germany
  • Atish Dabholkar, a String theorist and a Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar laureate
  • Avinash Deshpande, Astrophysicist and Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar awardee
  • Mahan Mj, Mathematician and a Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar laureate
  • Rakesh Jain, Distinguished Tumour researcher at Harvard Medical School and winner of National Medal of Science
  • Sirshendu De, Professor of Chemical Engineering department and a recipient of Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award
  • Shahid Jameel, Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Awardee
  • Padmanabhan Balaram, Padma Bhushan and TWAS Prize Awardee