Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IIT Kanpur) is a public technical and research university located in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India. 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 locality of Kalyanpur in Kanpur district The campus was designed by Achyut Kavinde in a modernist style.

During the first ten years of its existence, a consortium of nine US universities (namely MIT, UCB, 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 programs 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).

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Institute_of_Technology_Kanpur