IIT Roorkee


The Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee is a technical university located in Roorkee, Uttarakhand, India. It is the oldest engineering institution in India. It was founded as the College of Civil Engineering in 1847 during East India Company rule in India by James Thomason, the Lieutenant-Governor of the North-Western Provinces in which Roorkee was located; its purpose was to train officers and surveyors employed in the construction of the Ganges Canal. In 1854, after the completion of the canal and Thomason's death, it was renamed the Thomason College of Civil Engineering by Proby Cautley, the designer and projector of the canal. It was renamed University of Roorkee in 1949, and again renamed IIT Roorkee in 2001. The institution has 22 academic departments covering Engineering, Applied Sciences, Humanities & Social Sciences and Management programs with an emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.

History

The institution was founded in 1847 by James Thomason, the Lieutenant-Governor of the North-Western Provinces to aid engineers and surveyors at work in the construction of the Ganges Canal. It offered instruction catered to a variety of students; this included an engineering class for the domiciled British and some Indians; an upper subordinates class for British noncommissioned officers; and a lower subordinates class for Indian surveyors. By the mid-1880s, "the school has a hundred students, substantial buildings, and a reputation as an important center for the study of hydraulic engineering."
An Electrical Engineering department was added in 1897. The architecture department instituted a master's degree course in Architecture in 196970.
In 1978, the Institute of Paper Technology, Saharanpur was merged with the then University of Roorkee. The Institute of Paper Technology was established as School of Paper Technology by the Government of India in 1964, with an aid from the Royal Swedish Government. The school was renamed as the Institute of Paper Technology in July 1968 and subsequently Department of Paper Technology in July 1992.
The first edition of Thomso, the institute's annual cultural festival was held in 1982. In 1997 the government of India released a stamp dedicated to 150th anniversary of university of Roorkee.
On 21 September 2001, an ordinance issued by the Government of India declared it as the nation's seventh Indian Institute of Technology, renaming it to the current name, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee. The ordinance was converted into an act by the Parliament to make IIT Roorkee an "Institution of National Importance".
To mark the institute's 175th anniversary in 2022, the central government issued a Rs 175 coin as a gesture of commemoration.

Campus

The main campus in Roorkee has an area of.
IIT Roorkee has a separate campus of in Saharanpur which offers courses in Polymer Science, Process Engineering, Paper Technology & Packaging Technology, Applied Mathematics and Scientific Computing.
In addition to this, a new ten-acre campus has been established in Greater Noida, Knowledge Park II, which was inaugurated on 4 April 2011. The Noida extension centre has 16 lecture rooms, software laboratories, faculty offices, a library and a computer center.
Most students live in the hostels, where extracurricular activities complement the academic routine. The campus has 16 hostels, of which two are occupied by girls. The campus has a new co-ed hostel, Vigyan Kunj. A new hostel for female students, the Himalaya Bhawan, was recently constructed. Hostels may accommodate undergraduate and graduate students along with doctoral students. Students are assigned to hostels by the school administration after their freshmen year. There are nine hostels for married students, doctoral students and foreign students. Each bhawan has a mess. Mess administration consists of a staff advisor, a chief advisor, and a student mess secretary.

Organization and administration

Governance

All IITs follow the same organization structure which has President of India as visitor at the top of the hierarchy. Directly under the president is the IIT Council. Under the IIT Council is the board of governors of each IIT.
Under the board of governors is the director, who is the chief academic and executive officer of the IIT. Under the director, in the organizational structure, comes the deputy director. Under the director and the deputy director, come the deans, heads of departments, registrar.

Departments and Centers

IIT Roorkee in the country having the largest number of academic units. It has 23 academic departments covering engineering, applied sciences, humanities & social sciences, and management programmes, 9 academic center, 3 centers of excellence, 7 academic service centers and 7 supporting units.
IIT Roorkee offers academic programmes in Engineering, Technology, Applied Sciences, and Management. It has eleven undergraduate, one integrated dual degree, sixty one postgraduate and several doctoral programmes.
The institute admits students to B.Tech., B.Arch. and integrated M.Sc. integrated M.Tech courses through the Joint Entrance Examination conducted at centers all over India. Before being converted into an IIT, the university selected students through the Roorkee Entrance Exam conducted on an All-India level. The selectivity of REE was close to 0.25%. After IIT-JEE, it was considered to be the second toughest engineering entrance examination in India. Admission to PG programmes in engineering and architecture is on the basis of GATE score and/or a written test and interview. For PG programmes in fundamental sciences admission is based on the Joint Admission Test.
Along with the engineering courses, the institute offers a two-year residential MBA program for which the admissions, starting from 2011, will be done on the basis of Common Admission Test, thus replacing Joint Management Entrance Test previously conducted by the IITs. The institute also offered an interdisciplinary program in computer applications leading to a degree in Master of computer applications. The MCA program was a three-year course and admission for the course was through JAM. This programme has been discontinued.
According to statistics published by institute in 200708 4137 students were enrolled in the institute across all programs. The student-to-academic-staff ratio was 2.6:1 and that of UG/PG students was 1.4:1.

Rankings

Internationally, IIT Roorkee was ranked 369 in the QS World University Rankings 2023 and 114 in Asia, and is ranked 335 in the 2025 edition. It was ranked 701–800 in the Academic Ranking of World Universities of 2022.
IIT Roorkee ranked first, with a score of 84.92 among the Indian Architecture colleges according to NIRF 2024. It ranked sixth among engineering colleges with a score of 76.00 by the National Institutional Ranking Framework in 2024 and eighth overall with a score of 71.52.z
The Department of Management Studies ranked 18th with a score of 61.21 among management schools in India by the National Institutional Ranking Framework in 2024.

Library

An ISO 9001:2008 certified academic service centre in 2015, The Mahatma Gandhi Central Library finds a unique place in the academic spectrum of the institute. Started in 1848 with a few hundred donated books, its collection has grown to more than 3,50,000 documents in all media. The library contains rare manuscripts including a 1623 edition of William Shakespeare’s complete works. Providing information through e-resources is the main focus of the Library. It has around 90,000 sq ft of fully air-conditioned space. It can accommodate more than 500 readers at any point of time. The library building is WiFi enabled and contains a total 75 user terminals, dedicated for readers. It also contains an 80-seater open reading room.

Research

activities at the institute are conducted at either the department level or under the central office of Sponsored Research and Industrial Consultancy. Major research funding was awarded by several ministries and departments of the Government of India, including the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Ministry of New and Renewable Energy and others. Apart from these, a number of major research organizations who have awarded projects to IIT Roorkee include the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, Indian Space Research Organisation and others. The State Emergency Operation Centre in Dehradun
is planning to soon link data centre of an earthquake early warning system developed by IIT Roorkee with the State Emergency Operation Centre in Dehradun which would come as a great recognition for the establishment.