The government passed an act on 15 July 2001 to establish a science and technology university in Pabna. Amin Uddin Mridha was the university's first vice chancellor, appointed on 11 December 2008. Administrative activities commenced the following month at the university's temporary home, Pabna Teachers Training College (TTC) in Rajapur village, Pabna Sadar Upazila. PUST began with four departments: Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Computer Science and Engineering, Mathematics, and Business Administration. Two hundred students enrolled, divided evenly among the four departments. Instruction began on 4 April 2009 at the TTC. In 2009, Mridha was replaced by Md. Mozaffar Hossain as vice chancellor. Pabna District transferred to PUST 30 acres (12 ha) in Rajapur village for construction of a permanent campus. PUST also added four departments that year: Information Technology and Communication Engineering, Physics, Applied Physics and Electronic Communication Engineering, and Economics. Student unrest demanding the resignation of Vice Chancellor Hossain broke out on 17 June 2012. Over the following months students employed various tactics to press their demands, including a boycott of classes, human chain, sit-in, blockade of the Dhaka-Pabna highway, and confining the vice chancellor in the administration building. Activists of the Bangladesh Chhatra League, the student wing of the Awami League, accused the vice chancellor of corruption and nepotism, charges the university administration denied. Students continued to demonstrate against Hossain even after he left on 22 November 2013 at the conclusion of his four-year appointment. A replacement was not immediately named. Administrative collapse ensued, causing teachers to form a human chain on 23 December, demanding that a vice chancellor be appointed. On 2 January 2014, Al-Nakib Chowdhury took up the post of vice chancellor. In 2015, the Geography, Environment, and Urban Planning department, introduced in 2012, was split into two: Geography and Environment, and Urban and Regional Planning. In late August 2016, hundreds of students, frustrated by a long-standing problem of frequent power cuts to the dormitories, torched three of the university's buses in protest. The university administration closed PUST for a month to head off further violence. Chowdhury completed his tenure as vice chancellor on 1 January 2018. On 7 March, M Rostom Ali was named as his replacement. The board of regents closed PUST in November in response to student protests demanding better transportation, housing, food subsidies, security, and WiFi on campus. Allegations surfaced on 26 October 2019 that Ali, as well as the pro vice chancellor, the dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, and the department chair accepted bribes from applicants for a job in the History department. Ali denied taking a bribe, but the allegations triggered student demonstrations demanding that he be removed. Protests continued until 11 November, when the university administration accepted some of the students' other demands. Among their complaints were insufficient classroom space, under-staffing of teachers (particularly in the Architecture, History, and Geography and Environment departments), under-resourced laboratories and library, inadequate student housing, poor quality and expensive food, and a shortage of bus transport. In-person instruction, cancelled for more than 18 months due to the COVID-19 pandemic, resumed in October 2021. Ali's term as vice chancellor expired on 5 March 2022 during renewed student and staff protests over allegations of corruption and nepotism on his part.