Azerbaijan Technical University

Azerbaijan Technical University (AzTU; Azerbaijani: Azərbaycan Texniki Universiteti) is a public university, specialized in engineering, located in Baku, Azerbaijan. The University has 9 schools and 54 departments, 884 faculty members and approximately 6500 students.

The university traces its history to the much older Baku Polytechnical Institute. On November 14, 1920, the Soviet government decreed that the previous technical school, Baku Polytechnicum, would close and be replaced by Baku Polytechnical Institute, a more traditional polytechnic institute. The new school focused on training engineers in a broad range of industries: agriculture, civil engineering, electromechanics, economics and oil. The new school went through many name changes as its emphasis changed to meet the needs of Azerbaijan. In 1923 the school changed its name to Azerbaijan Polytechnical Institute. In March 1929, the Azerbaijan Communist Party decreed that the school be split into three independent schools covering agriculture, economics and oil.

However, the expanding needs for engineers in other areas outside oil resulted in expansion in the school's curriculum and the school changed names again in 1934, this time to the Azerbaijan Industrial Institute (Az. I.I.) as it was merged with civil engineering. World War II taxed the Soviet Union, and schools like Az. I.I. struggled to stay open. At the end of the war, there was great demand for oil engineers in the Soviet Union and the school trained them in large numbers.

In 1950, the government founded a separate Azerbaijan Polytechnical Institute (Az. P.I.) and moved non-petrochemical curricula to the new school so that Az. I.I. could focus on the oil industry. (Az. I.I. went on to eventually become the Azerbaijan State Oil Academy.) In 1970, a branch of AzPI was founded in Ganja.

In 1993, AzPI changed status and became Azerbaijan Technical University.