IIT Madras campus in Zanzibar will be the first IIT run by women

The Zanzibar campus of IIT Madras, is the first overseas campus of the Indian Institute of Technology, has also become the first IIT to have a female principal. IIT Madras alumnus Preeti Aghalayam has been appointed as the head of the Zanzibar campus, where the first academic session will begin in October.

“Aghalayam is the first woman to be a director of IIT. We will see many more encouraging things. We are following sustainable development goals and one of the important goals suggests that we should achieve gender balance,” said IIT Madras director V Kamakoti, at a press conference.

The (IIT) Madras, campus has become the first IIT in the country to launch an international campus, which will be located in Zanzibar, Tanzania. An India-Tanzania MoU was recently signed, the latest procedural step paving the way for this campus. Applications for the first academic session are now open and the institute offers two full-time academic programs.

“I am an IIT Madras alumnus and to do something of this magnitude for the institute and for the country is a great honor. Every time we visited Zanzibar as part of the IIT Madras contingent, we noticed that the representation of women on their side is quite So it was important that we do this carefully,” Preeti Aghalayam said.

Preeti Aghalayam completed her BTech in Chemical Engineering from IIT Madras in 1995 and her PhD from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2000. She has worked as a postdoctoral researcher at MIT, Cambridge and a professor at IIT Bombay. Aghalayam joined IIT Madras in 2010, where she is currently a Lecturer in the Department of Chemical Engineering. She was recently recognised as one of the 75 Women in STEM by the office of the Chief Scientific Advisor.