A guide to DST INSPIRE PhD fellowship

Target audience: tentative DST INSPIRE fellows and aspirants of the same.

I also made 2 videos on the topic:

All about DST INSPIRE PhD fellowship

Vinod's guide to DST INSPIRE PhD fellowship

I am a 2nd 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 an inspire-SHE scholar with 60%+ in MSc. Hence, I could apply.  After my MSc, I had a gap of 2 years before I joined PhD. 

You have to make a separate account on the INSPIRE portal for fellowship. Like, use a different email address than SHE one.

If you are university gold medalist in MSc/MS, the procedure remains the same. 

For people who apply for INSPIRE fellowship after getting enrolled in PhD, the procedure is slightly different. Their application directly jumps to level 2 evaluation, I assume.

My Timeline:_________________

2016-2021: INSPIRE SHE Scholar for 5 years.

May 2021: completed MSc in Physics.

Jan 2023: applied for DST INSPIRE fellowship. It goes to DST for level 1 evaluation.

Mar 2023: received a tentative (provisional) 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. DST evaluates your proposal. It's called level 2 evaluation.

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.  

April 30, 2024 (9 months after my PhD admission): I finally received 8 months of collective fellowship amount credited to my account by IISc. The August 2023 money was still left because DST wouldn't give that; it would be an institute fellowship. (Non-IIScians can ignore this part.) So, an official in the IISc academic office suggested a separate procedure. I hated it. The procedure wasn't clear, and the guy told me a new updated procedure, not online, but when I showed up at the office to know the progress 2 weeks later. He could have informed me of this in the email replies but didn't.

May 2024 onwards: I started receiving a regular 37k fellowship on the last day of each month. I also got the remaining institute fellowship worth 28 days in August. When DST doesn't pay, IISc pays you (but not until you get the final offer) -- that's the idea. 

Dec 19, 2024: I uploaded the statement of expenditure (SE), utilization certificate (UC), and the annual progress report of 1st year.

March 16, 2025: I got an email from Dr SM Babu asking me to send the UBI account mandate form of my host institute (IISc). Got it from the finance office and sent it. (I didn't upload it earlier coz it was not mandatory *.)

____________  Details __________________________

Application for DST INSPIRE PhD fellowship on Inspire portal:

It was simple.  I had no paper/publication to write about.  No research proposal.  I just wrote 'neuroscience and artificial intelligence' as an '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. Turns out, now I know that my actual PhD work will be quite different from the things I mentioned in this proposal. I will be expanding on one topic, leaving out the other two 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.  PhD Admission/ selection offer letter (the one u received from the institute/ university that informed u that u were selected for a PhD there!)

2.  (1st year PhD) Fees slip/ evidence 

3.  PhD registration certificate from the office ("Xyz is a PhD student at our institute, registered on this date")

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. 

Annual Progress Report:

Dec 10, 2024: I uploaded the 1st annual progress report (yes, after 1.5 years of joining PhD!), Statement of Expenditure (SE) and Utilisation Certificate (UC). SE & UC were issued by the academic office. I just got them signed by my supervisor and dept chairperson (HoD) and uploaded them on the portal.

But DST rejected my SE, saying the institute can't mention the HRA amount as an additional fellowship to pay the scholar! That was IISc's problem. Anyway, the finance office corrected it, mentioning a nonzero HRA amount this time but with an additional note that the institute has used the HRA amount to pay me the fellowship. The finance guy was directly got in touch with some DST official, probably Dr SM Babu. I hope this time it gets approved.

If urgent, message me at Kumar Jyani (VKJ_here on telegram)

_/\_

VKJ)