Preeti Aghalayam, an IIT Madras alumna, has been appointed as the director-in-charge of the IIT Madras’ Zanzibar campus, which is the first offshore campus of the Indian Institute of Technology.
New Delhi: Preeti Aghalayam has been appointed as the director-in-charge of the IIT Madras’ Zanzibar campus, which is the first offshore campus of the Indian Institute of Technology. Aghalayam, who is an IIT Madras alumna, has also become the first-ever woman director of an IIT.
“Aghalayam is the first woman to be an IIT director. We will see many more encouraging things. We are following sustainable development goals and one of the important goals suggests that we need to bring in gender balance,” IIT Madras director V Kamakoti told a press conference.
Reacting to the development, Preeti Aghalayam expressed that becoming the first-ever woman director of an IIT is ‘such a big honour’.
“I am an alumnus of IIT Madras and doing something of this magnitude for the institute and for the country is such a big honour. Every time we visited Zanzibar as part of the IIT Madras contingent, we noticed that the representation of women on their side is quite significant. So, it was important that we do this mindfully,” Aghalayam said.
Aghalayam, who is also a marathon runner, completed her BTech in Chemical Engineering from IIT Madras in 1995. She then did her PhD at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2000.
She has also worked as a postdoctoral researcher at MIT, Cambridge and faculty at IIT Bombay.
Aghalayam joined IIT Madras in 2010, where she is currently a Professor in the Chemical Engineering department.
She was recently acknowledged as one of the 75 Women in STEM by the Principal Scientific Advisor’s office.
Zanzibar in Tanzania will have the first IIT campus outside India. An MoU was recently signed between India and Tanzania, the final procedural step that paves the way for this campus.
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, who visited Tanzania last week, described the move as a ‘historic step’ that reflected India’s commitment to the Global South.
The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said the IIT campus in Zanzibar-Tanzania is envisioned as a world-class higher education and research institution with a broader mission to develop competencies in response to emerging global requirements.
“It will serve as an example to the world of the aspirational qualities of Indian higher education and innovation,” it said in a statement.
Several IITs have been receiving requests from the Middle-East and South Asian countries to set up their campuses. While IIT-Madras is setting up its campus in Tanzania, IIT-Delhi is considering setting up a campus in UAE.
IIT campuses are also in the pipeline in Egypt, Thailand, Malaysia and the UK.
