British Council invites applications from registered PhD students in India and the UK under the Newton Fund PhD Placement Programme. The scholarship supports a PhD scholar from India and the UK for a short-term placement in a HEI in the UK or India respectively.

About the programme

The placement offer provides funding to Indian and UK PhD scholars to be placed for a period of 2-4 months of their research at any UK or Indian HEI. Expected outcome for scholars includes building international intellectual networks, building research skills capacity of scholars, increasing cultural understanding and fostering sustainable research collaborations between institutions in both countries.

Who is invited to apply?

In the UK, the scheme is open only to UK scholars pursuing their PhD in STEM and Life Sciences at UK HEIs.

In India, the scheme is open only to Indian scholars enrolled at public-funded Indian HEIs with the following criteria:

1. INSPIRE PhD Senior Research Fellows (SRFs) from 2016 batch are eligible to apply for STEM and Life Sciences subjects only.

2. PhD Scholars (other than INSPIRE Fellows) who have qualified national level test and are pursuing PhD in mid second or third year of Life Sciences are eligible to apply. The following national level tests are considered: CSIR/UGC-NET, GATE, BET, ICMR-NET, ICAR-NET.

3. PhD scholars (other than INSPIRE and Life Sciences) pursuing PhD in second or third year from any public funded Indian HEIs, that submitted a response to British Council’s Expression of Interest (EoI) are eligible to apply. The list of institutions that submitted their EoI is available on the call for applications page.

Priority Areas

The UK and India have identified the following six priority areas for the Newton-Bhabha Fund:

1. Sustainable cities and urbanisation
2. Public health and wellbeing
3. Energy-water-food nexus 
4. Understanding oceans 
5. High value manufacturing
6. Big data

Accordingly, applications are invited in STEM, Life Science subjects, which are:

• Biological and Medical sciences including Life Sciences, Biotechnology, Botany, Zoology, Microbiology, Biochemistry, Medicine, Pharma and Veterinary Sciences
• Engineering and Physical sciences including Physics, Chemistry, Engineering, Physical Mathematics, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Big Data and Manufacturing
• Environment, Food and Agriculture Sciences
• Public Health and Well-being

Public-funded Indian HEIs can consider those disciplines that would align to the six priority areas of the Newton-Bhabha Fund. These may include Physical Sciences, Fundamental Sciences and Social Sciences.
 

For full details:

Please click here.