IITK

Indian Institute of Technology — Kanpur

भारतीय प्रौद्योगिकी संस्थान कानपुर
Motto	तमसो मा ज्योतिर्गमय (tamaso mā jyotirgamaya) (Sanskrit)
Motto in English	From Darkness, lead me to Light
Type	Public engineering school
Established	1959
Chairman	R. C. Bhargava
Director	Indranil Manna
Administrative staff	448
Undergraduates	3938
Postgraduates	2540
Location	Kalyanpur, Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India
Campus	1055 Acres
Website	www.iitk.ac.in

Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (also known as IIT Kanpur or IITK) is a public engineering institution located in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh. It was declared to be an Institute of National Importance by the Government of India under the Institutes of Technology Act.

Established in 1959 as one of the first Indian Institutes of Technology, the institute was created with the assistance of a consortium of nine US research universities as part of the Kanpur Indo-American Programme (KIAP).

IIT Kanpur was established by an Act of Parliament in 1959. The institute was started in December 1959 in a room in the canteen building of the Harcourt Butler Technological Institute at Agricultural Gardens in Kanpur. In 1963, the institute moved to its present location, on the Grand Trunk Road near the village of Kalyanpur in Kanpur district.

During the first ten years of its existence, a consortium of nine US universities (namely M.I.T, University of California, Berkeley, California Institute of Technology, Princeton University, Carnegie Institute of Technology, University of Michigan, Ohio State University, Case Institute of Technology and Purdue University) helped set up IIT Kanpur's research laboratories and academic programmes under the Kanpur Indo-American Programme (KIAP). The first Director of the Institute was P. K. Kelkar (after whom the Central Library was renamed in 2002).