Shiv Nadar University, Chennai is a state private university located in Chengalpattu district, Tamil Nadu, India. Established by the Shiv Nadar Foundation, the institution is part of a network of educational ventures founded by industrialist Shiv Nadar, the founder of HCL Technologies. The university offers multidisciplinary undergraduate and postgraduate programmes with an emphasis on research, the liberal arts, engineering, and the natural sciences.
| Type | State private university |
|---|---|
| Location | Chengalpattu, Tamil Nadu, India |
| Founder | Shiv Nadar Foundation |
| Affiliation | Government of Tamil Nadu (state private university) |
| Country | India |
The Shiv Nadar Foundation, set up in 1994, has established a series of educational institutions in India, including Shiv Nadar University in Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh, the SSN College of Engineering in Tamil Nadu, and the VidyaGyan rural leadership academies. Shiv Nadar University, Chennai was set up as an extension of this educational mission in southern India, drawing on the legacy of the SSN institutions co-founded by Shiv Nadar in memory of his father, Sivasubramaniya Nadar.
The university was constituted as a state private university under an Act of the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly, granting it the authority to award its own degrees. Its campus is situated in the Chengalpattu region on the outskirts of Chennai, adjacent to the long-established SSN College of Engineering campus on Old Mahabalipuram Road (Rajiv Gandhi Salai).
The university is organised into schools covering engineering, sciences, and the humanities and social sciences. Programmes typically include undergraduate degrees in engineering disciplines such as computer science, electronics, and mechanical engineering, alongside courses in the natural sciences, mathematics, and selected liberal arts subjects. Postgraduate and doctoral programmes support research across these areas.
The campus is located in Kalavakkam, in the Chengalpattu district of Tamil Nadu, on the southern fringe of the Chennai metropolitan area. The site shares its setting with other Shiv Nadar Foundation institutions, allowing for shared infrastructure and academic interaction.
As a privately funded research-oriented university in Tamil Nadu, Shiv Nadar University, Chennai contributes to the expansion of multidisciplinary higher education in southern India. It complements the established engineering focus of the SSN institutions by broadening the academic portfolio to include the sciences and humanities under a single university framework.