IIT Hyderabad hosts first industry summit to strengthen academia-industry partnerships

The Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad’s Department of Chemical Engineering organised its inaugural Industry Summit 2026, drawing nearly 100 delegates from 40 industries.

Sangareddy: The Department of Chemical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad hosted its first Industry Summit 2026, bringing together nearly 100 delegates from around 40 leading industries spanning oil and energy, materials, manufacturing and pharma.

The summit served as a platform to connect industry leaders, researchers, faculty and students, with a focus on advancing innovation aligned with national priorities.

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The event featured research showcases across key domains including sustainability and clean energy, catalysis, healthcare technologies, critical minerals, advanced materials, polymers and soft matter, AI and ML-driven chemical engineering, computational modelling and fluid dynamics. Interactive poster sessions and laboratory visits enabled direct dialogue between industry delegates and research scholars, creating opportunities for translational partnerships.

A highlight of the summit was the panel discussion titled “Beyond Collaboration: Building an Actionable Industry–Academia Framework for Viksit Bharat.” The discussion stressed the need to move beyond conventional MoU-based engagement towards structured, outcome driven partnerships involving co-developed research programmes, industry-embedded internships, joint doctoral supervision and accelerated technology translation.

Chief Guest Achyut Ghatak, Director (Technical) of Coal India Limited, underscored the importance of trust-based collaboration between academia and industry. He said India’s growth trajectory depends on faster commercialisation of research and stronger integration of academic innovation with industrial scale up.

He encouraged deeper engagement through problem-driven research and long-term strategic partnerships rather than transactional interactions, and reaffirmed his commitment on behalf of CIL to the recently established CLEANZ Centre of Excellence at IITH for clean coal energy with net zero emissions.

Director of IITH, Prof BS Murty, said institutions such as IITH must serve as engines of technological transformation by aligning academic research with national industrial priorities. He called for collaborative ecosystems where industry contributes not only funding but also domain challenges, mentorship and shared infrastructure to accelerate progress.