The Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (abbreviated IITB or IIT Bombay) is a public engineering institution located in Powai, Mumbai, India. In QS World University Rankings® 2014 IIT Bombay was ranked as India’s top university.It is the second-oldest (after Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur) institute of the Indian Institutes of Technology system.
IIT Bombay was founded in 1958.In 1961, the Parliament decreed IITs as Institutes of National Importance.A high-power committee of Government of India recommended in 1946 establishment of four higher institutes of technology to set the direction for the development of technical education in the country. Planning for the Institute at Mumbai began in 1957 and the first batch of 100 students was admitted in 1958.Since its establishment in Powai, the institute has physically expanded to include more than 584 major buildings with a combined area of more than 2.396 gross square feet (550 acres or 2.22 km²).
IIT Bombay has a comprehensive graduate program offering doctoral degrees in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.Currently IIT Bombay has a total of 14 academic departments, six centers, one school, and three interdisciplinary programmes. Over the last 53 years, around 39,000 engineers and scientists have graduated from the institute.Educational programmes here extend beyond the physical sciences and engineering into humanities and social sciences such as Economics, English, Philosophy, Psychology and Sociology and into management studies.Over the years, the institute has also created a niche for its innovative short-term courses through continuing education and distance education programmes.
IIT Bombay was the second IIT to be established in 1958 with assistance from UNESCO and with funds contributed by the Soviet Union. UNESCO agreed to provide equipment and technical experts mainly from the Soviet Union, while the Government of India accepted the responsibility for all other expenses including the cost of the building project and recurring expenses. The site chosen for the institute wasPowai, eighteen miles (29 km) from the city of Mumbai (then Bombay), with an area of 550 acres (2.2 km2) which was given by the thenBombay State Government. While construction was being completed, the first academic session of the Institute opened on 25 July 1958, in its temporary home at the Synthetic and Art Silk Mills Research Association (SASMIRA) building in Worli, Mumbai with 100 students. These students were selected from over 3,400 applicants for admission to the first year undergraduate engineering programmes ofAerospace, Chemical, Civil, Computer, Electrical, Engineering Physics, Energy, Mechanical, Metallurgical Engineering and MSc Chemistry. One of the main objectives of establishing the Institute was to develop facilities for studies in a variety of specialised engineering and technological sciences. The need for establishing adequate facilities for postgraduate studies and research was kept uppermost in mind in the founding years.
While the Institute was functioning provisionally at Worli, an effort was made to expedite the progress of the building project at its permanent location and Jawaharlal Nehru laid the foundation stone of the Institute at Powai on 10 March 1959.
The IIT Bombay campus is located at Powai, a suburb in north eastern Mumbai, between the Vihar and Powai lakes. The campus is divided into clusters of buildings. The academic area chiefly comprises the main building, various departmental annexes and auditoria. All department annexes are connected by a corridor named Infinite Corridor. Beyond the Convocation Hall lie most of the hostels. There are a total of 16 hostels, of which two hostels (Hostels 10 and 11) and a part of the newly constructed hostel (Hostel 15) are for female students.
Due to its proximity to the Sanjay Gandhi National Park, the campus has significant green cover and is mostly untouched by the pollution of the rest of the city. The proximity of the campus to the national park has also led to occasional sightings of panthers, Leopards and Gharial (Gavialis gangeticus) crocodiles along the banks of Lake Powai. Sometimes they stray into the campus in chase of hunt.
The institute has two swimming pools; football, hockey and cricket grounds; and tennis, basketball, squash and volleyball courts. It also has a Students' Activity Center (SAC) for various cultural and other extracurricular activities. In addition to these facilities, the campus also houses two high schools, one of which is a Kendriya Vidyalaya and the other is called IIT Campus School.
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