IIT Madras’ Zanzibar Campus to Be First Ever Woman-led IIT

The IIT Madras Campus Zanzibar, the first overseas campus of the Indian Institute of Technology, became the first ever IIT to have a woman Principal.

Preeti Aglayam, an IIT Madras alumnus, has been appointed as the Principal in Charge of the Zanzibar Campus, where the first academic session is scheduled to begin in October.

Aglaim is the first woman to hold the position of Director of the Information Technology Institute. We’ll see more encouraging things. “We are following the Sustainable Development Goals, and one important goal indicates that we need to achieve gender balance,” said V. Kamakutty, Director, IIT Madras, at a press conference.

The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras has become the first IIT in the country to launch an international campus, which is being established in Zanzibar in Tanzania. A Memorandum of Understanding was recently signed between India and Tanzania, which is the final procedural step paving the way for this campus.

Applications for the first academic session are already open as the institute offers two full-time academic programmes.

“I am an alumnus of IIT Madras and to do something like this for the institute and for the country is a great honor. Every time we visited Zanzibar as part of the IIT Madras squad, we noticed that representation of women alongside them is very important. Therefore, it was important that we do it mindfully.”

Aglayam completed her BTech in Chemical Engineering from IIT Madras in 1995 and her Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2000. She has worked as a postdoctoral researcher at MIT, Cambridge and faculty at IIT Bombay. Aglaim joined MIT Madras in 2010, where she is currently Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering. She was recently recognized as one of the 75 Women in STEM by the Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser.