Indian Institute of Technology Palakkad


Indian Institute of Technology Palakkad is a public autonomous engineering and research institute located in Palakkad, Kerala. It is one of the five new IITs proposed in the 2014 Union budget of India. The campus was inaugurated on 3 August 2015 at the temporary campus site located inside the Ahalia Integrated Campus, Palakkad. In February 2019, academic activities commenced in the Nila campus in Kanjikode. The institute has nearly 60 faculty, 600 students, and 50 non-teaching staffs.

History

IIT Palakkad was founded in 2015 with the Director of IIT Madras, Dr. Bhaskar Ramamurthi as the mentor Director. IIT Madras deputed a batch of experienced professors including the ones recently retired, former deans and heads of various departments to the new campus as both permanent and visiting professors. In January 2017, Dr. P B Sunil Kumar, who was the Professor-in-charge, was appointed as the Director by the President of India, Pranab Mukherjee.

Campus and location

IIT Palakkad currently functions in two campuses - the temporary campus and the Nila campus - which are separated by about 13 km. Temporary campus is at Ahalia Integrated campus in Kozhippara, Palakkad, which is about 20 km from Palakkad town. Temporary Campus is 55,000 sq. ft. in area and consists of well-equipped academic classrooms, a seminar room, an auditorium, conference room, workshop, library, cafeteria, laboratories and faculty offices. It also provides hostel and sports and recreational facilities with access to high-speed internet. Nila campus is set up in 30 acres out of the 504 acres allotted to the permanent campus site in Kanjikode. It houses two batches of undergraduate students. Facilities here include two boys hostel and a girls hostel, classrooms, library and research labs. The construction of phase I permanent campus in a 500-acre plot at Kanjikode is ongoing.

Academics

IIT Palakkad currently offers four-year Bachelor of Technology and two years MS programmes in different engineering disciplines. Similar to the other IITs, admission to undergraduate programmes is based on qualification through the Indian Institute of Technology Joint Entrance Examination. In addition to that, Ph.D programme is also offered in all the disciplines of Science and Engineering. It is also offering Master of Technology in two disciplines from the year 2019 in which candidates having valid GATE scores are eligible to apply. From 2019, M.Sc programmes in Physics and Chemistry will also be offered. The admissions to these programmes are through IIT-JAM.
IIT Palakkad is currently functioning with 8 disciplines.