New Delhi: The Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, has invited applications from eligible PhD (Doctoral) degree holders for INSPIRE Faculty Award scheme (Session January – June 2017). The Scheme has provision to award 1000 INSPIRE Faculty Awards per year to eligible PhD degree holders in science, mathematics, engineering, pharmacy, medicine, and agriculture related subjects based on rigorous and transparent criteria basis met by the potential aspirants.
INSPIRE Faculty Award Scheme opens up an “Assured Opportunity for Research Career (AORC)” for young researchers in the age group of 27-32 years. The scheme offers a contractual research awards to young achievers and opportunity for independent research in the near term and emerge as a future leader in the long term. Calls for applications are advertised two times in a year January and July. The January 2017 advertisement is for Session January – June 2017 of INSPIRE Faculty Award Scheme.
Eligible candidates can send applications through three routes: Direct, Nomination and Institution.
Eligibility Conditions: The candidates should be Indian citizens and people of Indian origin including NRI/PIO status with PhD degree in science, mathematics, engineering, pharmacy, medicine, and agriculture related subjects from any recognized university in the world.
As per the INSPIRE Faculty Award scheme, those who have submitted their PhD Theses and are awaiting award of the degree are also eligible. However, the award will be conveyed only after confirmation of the awarding the PhD degree. The upper age limit as on 1st January 2017 should be 32 years for considering support for a period of 5 years. However, for SC and ST candidates upper age limit will be 35 years.
The candidates must have record of publication (s) in highly reputed Journal demonstrating research potential of the candidate.
Candidates with the below desirable criteria will be given priority:
Candidates who are within top 1% at the School Leaving Examination, IIT-JEE Rank, 1st Rank Holder either in graduation or post-graduation level university examination (which are used presently for identifying INSPIRE Scholars at under-graduate level and INSPIRE Fellows for doctoral degree).
Financial support and duration of INSPIRE Faculty Award: As per the scheme guideline, each selected INSPIRE Faculty shall be eligible to receive a consolidated amount equivalent to the scale of the Assistant Professor of an IIT as Fellowship amount. In addition, a Research Grant of Rs 7 lakh per year for 5 years shall also be provided to each successful candidate. The INSPIRE Faculty Award is for a maximum period of five years.
Each INSPIRE Faculty Award shall be regulated as per the guidelines available at the website: www.online-inspire.gov.in .
The INSPIRE Faculty is eligible to apply for any competitive grant from agencies during the tenure of the INSPIRE Faculty position and would be favorably considered by DST for future support based on performance and technical merit.
How to apply and key dates: As per the notification, eligible students choosing to apply Direct Mode and Nomination Mode, should apply On-line in prescribed formats on the official website of http://www.online-inspire.gov.in/ . After successful submission of application through online, the candidate must take a print of the application thus submitted before 28 February 2017. For details on how to send the applications candidates should refer the exact notification uploaded on the official website of INSPIRE Award.
Under `Institutions Mode’, candidates may directly approach reputed academic institutes and the host academic Institute shall be required to adopt their own internal process and mechanism as available before forwarding names of shot-listed candidates for final selection by the Apex Committee. For Institutions Mode, the last date for submission of application with all relevant documents is 31 May 2017.
For scheme guidelines, eligibility criteria, how to apply and other details, the interested candidates should refer the scheme advertisement uploaded on the website.
