Indian Institute of Technology Tirupati is a rapidly growing third generation (3G) IIT and recognizes the importance of the subject of Chemistry as a major discipline even at the time of inception in 2015.  While the activity started as a basic teaching course for the undergraduate engineers and technologists with the full support of colleagues from the Department of Chemistry, IIT Madras, within a span of two years the institute inducted three young regular faculty who have started giving the shape to the Department and providing the nourishment for its growth.  These academically thirsty three musketeers started the doctoral program within a year after their existence and started bringing the synergy between teaching and research.  While these three were theoretical, computational and physical chemistry based faculty, within next one year the institute proactively recruited another three experimental chemists in the inorganic and organic chemistry areas of specialization.  Thus by late 2019, the department has representation from all the four branches of chemistry, viz., Inorganic, Organic, Physical & Theoretical, a perfect combination to initiate a Master’s program in Chemistry in order to bridge the natural gap created by the introduction of undergraduate on one hand and the doctoral program on the other. 

Thus the Master’s program has been initiated with great fanfare in the academic year 2020-21 with a decent contingent of 14 students.  The Department would like to nurture its Masters’ students with nutrients rich in chemistry but with adjuvants from engineering, the fruit of which is undoubtedly technology. The curriculum has been designed in such a way that it will particularly benefit the students to face the competitive world with confidence and dignity in the individual pursuit in choosing their liking profession, whether it is carrying out research or providing their expertise either to the governmental or to the non-governmental organizations including the industries which run based on the knowledge of Chemistry. Thus, the programme will prepare the students well- adorned to take up the jobs in the academia as well in the industrial sector.  The Department has taken the total Ph.D. student strength to 10 by early 2021 and is supported by three permanent laboratory technical personal, who are all doctoral degree holders.  The department has already published considerable number of research papers and continues to do so and all this is supported by several sponsored research projects. While maintaining a positive slope in its growth, the department has inducted two INSPIRE faculty and a DST woman scientist, who would complement the departmental activities while focusing on their research targets.  The department will be adding couple of more faculty and a technical personal soon during 2021.

While a full-fledged Chemistry Department with research laboratories is being built in our permanent campus in Yerpedu, the department developed a state of the art Undergraduate Laborarory in 2016 and a Master’s lab in 2021, both in the temporary campus located in Renigunta.  The Department has taken all the measures to equip with modern instruments to support our teaching and research and we have already procured and installed several spectroscopy based instruments.  The institute has a parallel plan to develop an integrated instrumentation facility and embarked in constructing a building space of about 80,000 sft carpet area and this is exclusively available for housing all the high end equipment for the use of entire institute and beyond.  As the institute plans to cater all the high end facilities to various

needy academic and industrial clients, it has taken an initiative to invite DST to establish SAIF on the campus of IIT Tirupati, a logical and spontaneous act that came out since the currently built instrumentation center is one of the largest centers in the country and further that we are located in the midst of a number of academic institutes/colleges and also industries.   

Though the department is as small as integrated and undivided Indian family, in order to maintain its vigor and dynamism and achieve vibrancy in all dimensions, the department has conducted a couple of symposia/workshops during 2020 and continues to increase its frequency in the time to come.   As the chemistry is wide spread in the universe, the department would like to bring awareness of this to the entire chemistry fraternity of our department and the institute, whether they are the students (UG, PG, PhD), staff or faculty, an unique program entitled, “Chemistry Beyond Classroom” has been initiated.  At present this is going on in two dimensions, viz., “Chemistry Beyond Classroom – Connecting to Great Minds” and “Chemistry Beyond Classroom – Research Endeavours at IIT Tirupati”.  Hopefully other dimensions will be added to this in the time to come.

As a first step to elevate the department to greater heights, the department would like to broaden its base in a systematic manner.  By 2025, the department would like to expand its faculty strength to about 15 while catering the teaching needs to 40 to 50 at masters’ level and the research needs to 50 to 60 students at doctoral level during the same period.  This will be further augmented by inducting postdoctoral researchers to a tune of 15 to 20, while expanding the technical staff to the requisite levels.  With all this the department will be in a position not just to work in the conventional areas of chemistry, but it would have enough strength to embark on the interdisciplinary areas where chemistry plays pivotal role and its fruits provide solution for the societal problems.