COMSATS Institute of Information Technology (CIIT) was established as a project of COMSATS in 1998. CIIT received the Charter of a Degree Awarding Institution (DAI) in the year 2000. The Institute that started its operations in a small building in Islamabad with less than 300 students, has since grown to become a major public-sector university in Pakistan and a Centre of Excellence of COMSATS. CIIT’s seven fully functional campuses in Islamabad, Lahore, Abbottabad, Wah, Attock, Sahiwal and Vehari, are actively engaged in teaching, research and public service.

CIIT, currently, comprises 5 faculties, 17 departments and 6 research centres. The Institute offers 72 degree programmes in Computer Sciences, Business Administration, Development Studies, Telecommunication and Networking, Electrical Engineering, Power Engineering, Civil Engineering, Health Informatics, Computer Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Earth Sciences, Mathematics, Electronics, Bioinformatics, Biosciences, Physics, Economics, Psychology, Pharmacy, Chemistry, Biotechnology, Project Management, Energy Management, Meteorology, Architecture and Design, in which more than 21,500 students are currently enrolled. The Institute has, so far, produced 20,550 graduates including 54 PhDs and has 2,171 qualified faculty members, out of which 520 hold Ph.D. qualification. Moreover, 471 faculty and staff members of CIIT are undergoing advanced education (MS and Ph.D.) at leading universities around the world.

The Institute published 2,381 research articles (from 2005 to 2012), brought-out 30 books, acquired 6 patents, and organized more than 300 research-based workshops/conferences. CIIT was awarded the international certificate of quality, ISO 9001:2008 in the year 2011. Furthermore, its Quality Enhancement Cell (QEC) has been placed in the top category of ‘W’ by the Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan.

According to HEC’s rankings announced in February 2012, CIIT is placed at number 9 amongst 132 universities of Pakistan in terms of quality of education and research productivity, whereas it has been ranked at top most position in the field of Computer Science & IT. CIIT has signed over 80 Memoranda of Understanding with some of the leading universities of the world, such as the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA; University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Jacobs University Bremen, Germany,; Tampere University, Finland, Lancaster University, UK etc.

CIIT also offers 100 graduate scholarships to students/researchers from COMSATS’ Member Countries, every year.