Daijiworld Media Network – Chennai (MS)

Chennai, May 13: IIT graduates from India are preferred by renowned Indian and international companies. However, it is very rare for IIT graduates to have the opportunity to serve their own institution in a senior capacity. Dr Preeti Aghalayam is one such rare individual who made history by becoming the first female alumna of IIT to serve as the campus director of IIT Tanzania, recently established by IIT Madras.

The IIT campus in Zanzibar, Tanzania, currently has 35 undergraduate and 15 postgraduate students. Dr Preeti serves as the director-in-charge of the Zanzibar campus. Before assuming this position, she had worked as a professor at IIT Madras.

Dr Preeti earned her BTech in Chemical Engineering from IIT Madras in 1991. She then completed her MS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Rochester in New York. Furthermore, she obtained her PhD in 1996 from the University of Massachusetts. She also served as faculty at IIT Bombay and as a postdoctoral researcher at MIT in Cambridge.

Dr Preeti is also a blogger and marathon runner. She has authored several articles on diesel oxidation converter performance using CFD. She is one of the 75 women in STEM who has been recognized by the Principal Scientific Advisor’s Office.