Established on October 1, 1933 as University Department of Chemical Technology (popularly called UDCT) of the University of Bombay (now Mumbai), with the noble intention of advancing India’s knowledge reserves in chemical science and technology, the Institute has grown to become a premier (deemed) university devoted to education, training, research and industrial collaboration in chemical engineering, chemical technology, applied chemistry, pharmacy, biotechnology and bio-processing. The then UDCT grew in stature over the years and was granted partial autonomy by the University of Mumbai in 1985, which was taken to the next echelon under the concept of autonomy propagated by the University Grants Commission (UGC). Due to its size and spread of activities, it was converted into University Institute of Chemical Technology (UICT) on 26th January, 2002 and under the TEQIP of the World Bank it was granted full autonomy in 2004. Upon strong recommendation of the UGC through a peer review process, the autonomous institute status was finally converted in to a Deemed-to-be-University by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), Govt. of India, on 12 September 2008. Seven convocations have so far taken place in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016, 2017 and 2018.

Based on its stellar performance over the years, the Government of Maharashtra granted it the Elite Status and Centre of Excellence in the State Assembly on April 20, 2012. This is a singular distinction accorded to any institute in the entire country and speaks volumes about the achievements of the ICT.

In November 2017, National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) Committee visited ICT and graded with A++ CGPA of 3.77 out of 4. ICT has been ranked amongst top ten Engineering Institutes of India and 19th amongst the top universities if the country. It is also recognized at rank 4 amongst the Pharmacy Institutes. In the BRCS QS Universities ranking 2018, ICT ranked at 118; whereas in 2019, ICT is 115 among all BRICS.

On March 2018, ICT for the first times crossed the confines of Maharashtra when the institute inaugurated the “ICT Mumbai Indian Oil Odisha Campus” at Bhubaneswar on 18th March 2018, at the hands of President of India, Honorable Shri Ram Nath Kovind, in the august presence of Honorable Shri S.C Samir, Governor of Odisha, Honorable Shri

Dharmendra Pradhan, Union Minister of Petroleum and Natural gas, Skill Development and Entrepreneurship and distinguished bureaucrats, academicians, industry stalwarts and citizens. The Institute has signed MOU with IIT Kharagpur for collaborating in various research activities.

May 4th 2018 was another glorious day for ICT, when ICT officially established its second campus outside Mumbai. The foundation stone of Marathwada Off-campus Centre of ICT was laid at the hands of Chief Minister of Maharashtra Shri. Devendra Fadnavis among other dignitaries. A land of 203 acres has been allocated at Siraswadi near Jalna to the Institute.

ICT’s contribution to wealth creation must be one of the best amongst the branded institutes. The institute has been developing technologies which are consistently being commercialized. An illustration to such effect is technology for hydrogen production by water splitting. The technology has been successfully scaled up to pilot scale and transferred for commercial deployment to ONGC. The technology has been granted patents in Korea, Japan, USA, Canada and China.

A 1 million Litre/Day Demonstration plant based on ICT’s Sewage Processing Technology was inaugurated in September 2018 at New Delhi by Dr. Harsh Vardhan, Hon’ble Union Minister of Science & Technology, Environment Forest and Climate Change and Earth Sciences in presence of Shri. Anil Baijal, Lt. Governor of Delhi and Dr. Renu Swarup, Secretary, Dept. of Biotechnology. The plant is based on a combinations of ICT’s technologies namely CCR, CTL and Rapid AD technology and is called DBT-ICT Nullah/ River cleaning technology. The plant shall process e at Barapullah Nallah to generate clean water and compressed Biogas (CBG).

ICT’s successfully demonstrated and patented DBT-ICT 2G-Ethanol technology has been taken up by major Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs) such as HPCL for establishing commercial scale plants. In July 2018, ICT signed agreements with LSTK bidders, a step taking ICT closer to its goal of commercializing the technology. ICT’s Municipal Solid Waste and Liquid Waste (MSW/MLW) technology have been taken by BPCL for putting up a 1ton/day pilot plant at BPCL’s Chembur colony in Mumbai.

Technologies for dehydration of vegetables to produce nutritious drinking vegetables (10 ton fresh vegetables/month) have been commercialised. Retort processing to make ready- to-eat traditional Indian curries etc (6-8 tons/month) and technology for making fruit wine (24kl/year) have been commercialized. Start-ups have been established based on the mentioned technologies.

Our endeavours, extending well beyond the confines of the classroom, will aim to enhance public welfare and our attempts to dissipate knowledge will spread to a greater multi- and cross-disciplinary platform to conduct research, discovery, technology development, service to industry and entrepreneurship, in consonance with India’s aspirations to be a welfare state