A guide to DST INSPIRE PhD Fellowship
Target audience: tentative DST INSPIRE fellows and aspirants of the same.
I am a 1st year PhD scholar at the Centre for Neuroscience, IISc, Bengaluru. I was an INSPIRE SHE scholar during my BSc at DU (2016–19) and MSc in Physics at IIT-G (2019–21). I was not an institute topper but a SHE scholar with 60%+ in MSc. Hence, I could apply. After my MSc, I had a gap of 2 years before I joined PhD.
My Timeline:
2016–2021: INSPIRE SHE Scholar for 5 years.
May 2021: completed MSc in Physics.
Jan 2023: applied for DST INSPIRE fellowship.
Mar 2023: received a tentative offer letter for PhD fellowship on the Inspire portal
Apr 2023: using this letter, I applied for a PhD (neuroscience) and a PhD (brain and AI) at IISc.
May 2023: appeared for IISc and NCBS interviews here in Bengaluru. Got selected.
August 1, 2023: joined (registered/enrolled) PhD — neuroscience at IISc — TENTATIVE admission.
August 30, 2023: uploaded a brief (kinda temporary) research proposal on the Inspire portal.
December 20, 2023: received final offer letter on Inspire portal.
January 8, 2024: uploaded signed JCA (joining cum acceptance) letter with other docs merged on the portal.
March 22, 2024: I received my first (personal) sanction letter on the portal. Very soon, the first consolidated sanction letter also came on the outer portal (appears in the announcements on the homepage itself). It contains the names and sent-money details of many other DST fellows.
I submitted it to the institute office. Now, I am waiting for the fellowship of the past 9 months to be credited by the institute.
________ Details __________
Application for DST INSPIRE PhD fellowship on Inspire portal:
It was simple. I had no paper/publication to write up. No research proposal. Just wrote ‘neuroscience and artificial intelligence’ in place of ‘area of interest.’
I was tentatively admitted to PhD at IISc on condition that I produce the final Inspire letter by October 31, 2023, which I couldn’t do, but they still didn’t kick me out. They know DST takes about 4- 6 months to release the final letter.
Writing the research proposal:
My tentative supervisor helped me a bit with this, but it was mostly me. I was unsure what I would be working on. My lab was also not finalized — CNS at IISc has a lab rotation policy in 1st semester. So, I briefly mentioned 3 different topics of interest in the proposal and mentioned 1 or 2 experiments that I would like to do to explore these topics.
JCA (joining cum acceptance) letter:
Along with the filled JCA signed by the supervisor and all, you have to merge in a PDF:
1. Signed JCA
2. PhD Admission/ selection offer letter (“Xyz is a PhD student at our institute, registered on this date”)
3. Fees slip/ evidence
4. PhD registration certificate from the office
Once you get the first sanction letter (finally some lumpsum money!):
I got that after 7 months of tentative PhD admission. Then, one has to submit it to the institute’s academic office and ask them for further procedures. Every institute might have a different process.
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VKJ)