In 1772, Prokofi Akinfiyevich Demidov turned to Catherine II with a suggestion to open as part of the Moscow Foundling Home an “Educational School for Children from Merchant Families for Commerce.” A regular donor to the Foundling home, he donated 205,000 rubles for education of merchant children.

In 1779 by the order of Catherine II the school was renamed after Demidov and bared its name up until its move to St. Petersburg in 1800.

After the death of Catherine II in 1796, Pavel I named his wife Maria Fedorovna “Head of the Society for Education of Noble Maidens” and on May 2, 1797 she took over supervision of Moscow and St. Petersburg Foundling homes.

It was said that that year the College seized its existence, but the St. Petersburg Central Historical Archives have documents citing admissions in 1919, 1920 and 1924.

In 1931, the Council of People's Commissars of USSR opened in the College's former building a Leningrad Teaching Mechanics and Technology Refrigeration Plant.

[10] During the war, students and instructors dug trenches, fought on the front lines and protected the building from lighting bombs and shells.

The institute developed synthetic fuel for tanks and for engines in low temperatures, isothermal container for transporting blood, refrigeration unit for testing samples of military equipment, soy milk production and fish canning, flour substitutions.

[9] The boost of food processing during the Stalin years led to high demand in the new equipment for meat, dairy, fish and other industries.

[1] Also, the university's refrigeration units were used for freezing the soil when building tunnels for Moscow and Leningrad Metro.

[12] In 1997 the college started training specialists in meat processing and in 2002 got the license to teach Food Biotechnologies and Environmental Protection and Resources Management.

Students interned at Baltika Brewing Company, Norilsk Nickel, BSH Hausgeräte, several meat-packing plant like Parnas-M, and others.

[17] Staff of merging colleges must jointly assess the strengths and weaknesses of the merger, evaluate the risks and make the process as painless as possible.

[19] On Oct. 1, 2014 at the VII St. Petersburg Innovations Forum the agreement was signed between ITMO University and United Elements Engineering and on Sept. 24, the Institute opened a department specializing in industrial climate equipment.