Dr Preeti Aghalayam is the first woman director to lead an IIT campus. She will work as the first woman Director-in-charge for IIT Madras Zanzibar. Dr Preeti works as a Professor in the Chemical Engineering department at IIT Madras.
"The Zanzibar Campus of the IIT Madras will be located on the Zanzibar Island, off the East African mainland and is being planned as a unique and game-changing educational partnership between India and Zanzibar-Tanzania," the premier educational institute said in a press release.
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 did her BTech in Chwmical Engineering from IIT Madras in 1991. After BTech, she went to the University of Rochester, New York to pursue MS in Chemical Engineering.
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After MS, Aghalayam went to the University of Massachusetts for her PhD in 1996. She has also worked as a postdoctoral researcher at MIT, Cambridge and faculty at IIT Bombay.
Preeti is also a marathon runner and a blogger. She has authored many articles along with other professors, on modelling the effects of non-uniformities from urea injection on SCR performance using CFD, modelling the effects of inlet manifold design on diesel oxidation catalytic converter performance, etc.
Dr Aghalaya has also been acknowledged as one of the 75 Women in STEM by the Principal Scientific Advisor's office.
