Indian Institute of Technology Tirupati is a rapidly growing third-generation (3G) IIT and has recognized the importance of the subject of Chemistry as a major discipline since the time of inception in 2015.  While the activity started as a basic teaching course for 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 regular faculties who started giving the shape to the Department and providing the nourishment for its growth. With time now we have eleven regular faculty members, and we are fortunate to have stalwarts in the field as guest and adjunct faculty. In the year of 2018, department of chemistry started the doctoral program a year after their existence and started bringing the synergy between teaching and research. Currently, we have around 40 regular PhD students (the highest among all departments in IIT Tirupati). Recently, all our first batch PhD students have successfully defended their PhD thesis and a few more are in line. The department has already published a considerable number of research papers and continues to do so and all this is supported by several sponsored research projects.

The Master’s program has been initiated with great fanfare in the academic year 2020-21 with a decent contingent of 14 students.  So far, the MSc program is running successfully, and three batches have already graduated. Our graduates are doing great in their careers including PhD in the USA, Germany, etc. and also placed themselves in other sectors.  Our current MSc batches (2023-25 and 2024-26) are running with its full capacity of twenty students each from twelve different states of the country implies the popularity and diverse acceptance of the program. The Department would like to nurture its students with nutrients rich in chemistry but with adjuvants from other interdisciplinary areas. 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 of choosing their profession of choice, 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 program will train the students well-adorned to take up jobs in academia as well as in the industrial sector.

A full-fledged chemistry research laboratory is built on our permanent campus, where the department is developing state-of-the-art facilities. The Department has taken all the measures to be equiped with modern instruments to support our teaching and research and we have already procured and installed (or are about to install) several spectroscopy-based instruments, including fluorescence spectrophotometer, FTIR, 400 NMR, etc. We have several mass spectrometers including GCMS, micro-GCMS, high-resolution LCMS and HPLC for the separation of sensitive compounds. The institute has a parallel instrumentation facility named the central instrument facility (CIF), which houses several high-end research instruments. See more on our facilities page.

Though the department is as small as an integrated and undivided Indian family, in order to maintain its dynamism and achieve vibrancy in all dimensions, the department regularly arranges conferences and symposiums. As chemistry is widespread 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. The department started a unique program entitled, “Chemistry Beyond Classroom” which renamed as "Rasayan Sarathi".  The department regularly participates in outreach programs and constantly encourages young minds like high school students.

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 20 while catering the teaching needs to 50 to 60 at MSc level and the research needs to 70 to 80 students at the doctoral level during the same period.  This will be further augmented by inducting postdoctoral researchers to a volume of 15 to 20, while expanding the technical staff to the requisite levels. The department is planning to launch the BS-MS dual degree program with around 30 students by 2025. With all these, 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 a pivotal role and its results provide solutions for societal problems.