Indian Institute of Technology Madras is one among the foremost institutes of national importance in higher technological education, basic and applied research. In 1956, the German Government offered technical assistance for establishing an institute of higher education in engineering in India. The first Indo-German agreement in Bonn, West Germany for the establishment of the Indian Institute of Technology at Madras was signed in 1959.

The Institute was formally inaugurated in 1959 by Prof. Humayun Kabir, Union Minister for Scientific Research and Cultural Affairs. The IIT system  has sixteen Institutes of Technology. The first of these to be instituted are at Kharagpur (estb. 1951), Mumbai (estb. 1958), Chennai (estb. 1959), Kanpur (estb. 1959), Delhi (estb. 1961), Guwahati (estb. 1994) and Roorkee (estb. 1847, joined IITs in 2001).