Start Early PhD
IIT Gandhinagar recognizes the importance of creating opportunities for aspiring young learners to gain entry into the exciting arena of scientific research. The Start Early Ph.D. Fellowship of IITGN is conceived to meet this need. This full-time residential fellowship is designed to enable budding scientists and engineers to gain early entry into the Ph.D. programmes at IIT Gandhinagar. The objective of this programme is to put promising young undergraduate students from diverse disciplines on the fast-track mode of cutting edge technological research in order to prepare them to participate in the process of nation building.
Important Dates
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12 February 2025
Application Opens
26 March 2025
5:00 PMApplication Deadline
6 to 8 April 2025
Announcement of the Shortlisted Candidates (tentative)
20 April 2025 to 20 May 2025
Written test and/or interview
Research overview |
List of existing PhD scholars
Brochure
Apply
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Brochure
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Eligibility Criteria
Eligibility Criteria
Final year BTech (4-year programme)/BS (4-year programme)/Integrated Master of Science (5-year programmes) students from IITs/IISc with a CPI/CGPA of not less than 6.0 out of 10 at the end of their 3rd year.
Final year BTech (4-year programme)/BS (4-year programme)/BS-MS (5-year programme) students from NITs/IISERs with a CPI/CGPA of not less than 8.0 at the end of their pre-final year.
For students in SC/ST/PwD category, a relaxation of 0.5 in the CPI/CGPA shall be applicable on the above-mentioned norms.
Final year BTech students from other select colleges, as defined by the institute, who are among the top 5 rank holders in the departments at the end of their pre-final year. For students in SC/ST/PwD category, they need to be among the top 10 rank holders as per the relaxed criteria.
You may check with the HOD/Director of your college to see if your college is included in the list of select colleges. The Department Head / Principal / Director of the respective institute will be required to issue a rank certificate supporting each application. You may download a template of the certificate from the application portal. Students may contact us admission@iitgn.ac.in to check their eligibility.There is No GATE qualification requirement.
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Fellowship
Fellowship
Rs. 47,000/- per month (with valid GATE score)
Rs. 37,000/- per month (without GATE score)
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Highlights
Highlights
GATE score is NOT mandatory for admission
Candidates are encouraged to appear for GATE for an enhanced stipend rate
Monthly stipend of Rs 47,000 (For candidates with valid GATE score) or Rs 37,000 (for others)
Travel support up to Rs 2 Lakhs for attending international conferences
Support of up to $12,500 may be considered for research at leading Universities/Labs abroad for a period of upto 6 months. -
Application Procedure
Application Procedure
All applications must be submitted online. On submission of the application form, the candidate will be redirected to the homepage of the portal, where they can download the form. The applicants are requested to download the form and keep a copy with them. A mail to the candidate regarding the details of the application and a link to download the application form is sent after the submission.
You need to furnish a hardcopy of the application form and all the documentary evidence (copies of testimonials, certificates, publications, work experience and research/professional experience) at the time of interview. Incomplete applications will be rejected.
While applying online you need to upload a rank certificate issued by the Head of the Department of your college/university.There is NO application fee.
You NEED NOT send the hard-copy of the application form.
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Admission Procedure
Admission Procedure
Admission is generally offered on the basis of an interview, which is supplemented by a written test if necessary. The final selection will be mainly based on academic credentials, written test and/or interview.
The reserved category candidates will be given due relaxation in cutoff marks as per the norms.
The mode (offline/online) and dates for the written test (if any) and interview will be communicated to the shortlisted candidates by their respective departments.
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Focus Areas
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Biological Sciences and Engineering
1. Genome Regulatory Mechanisms
2. Ultrasound (Imaging, Diagnostics, and Ultrasound-mediated therapy)
3. Computational Biology, Systems Biology
4. Plant biology (Development, Reproduction, Cell-cell Signaling, Biotechnology, Agriculture)
5. Drug delivery, Biomaterials (Hydrogels and Implants) -
Chemical Engineering
1. Reaction Engineering: Heterogeneous catalysis, Catalyst synthesis, Multiphase reactions
2. Process optimization and control: Process Engineering, Control, and Optimization, Cyber-Physical Systems for industrial manufacturing and buildings, Machine learning and data science
3. Pharmaceutical Engineering and drug delivery: Biomaterials, Stimuli-responsive hydrogels, nano-drug suspensions, microbubbles for drug delivery and ultrasonic imaging, Pharmaceutical powder processing, Crystallization of pharmaceuticals, polymorphic behavior of pharmaceuticals
4. Molecular simulations: Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics, Protein aggregation and protein folding, Biomolecular Simulations, molecular dynamic simulations for aqueous solutions of drug molecules
5. Water treatment: Waste-water treatment, Drinking water
6. Environmental science and engineering: Particulate matter and aerosols, Building energy management, indoor air quality, atmospheric transport, and transformation of pollutants
7. Advanced functional materials: Functional materials for CO2 capture and adsorption, Surface Engineering and Superhydrophobic surfaces, Colloids and Interfaces, Rheology, Supercapacitors and other energy storage devices
8. Polymer science and engineering: Polymer processing, polymer gels, polymer blends, Shape memory polymers, Smart polymeric materials, Polymer ionic liquids, Polymer nanocomposites
9. Nano & bio-engineering: Bio-printing, 3D printing, Synthetic biology, protein engineering, Hybrid nanomaterials, and biomolecules for agricultural applications -
Chemistry
1. Machine learning potentials in material simulations; electronic structure and Delta-ML models for organic solar cells and LEDs
2. Molecular simulations to explore bio-assembly at the graphene aqueous interface; Computational approaches to study Ayurvedic formulations; Investigating the role of carbohydrates in bio-molecular systems
3. Catalysis for CO2 conversion to fuel, carbon capture and utilization, green hydrogen, electrochemistry, Materials chemistry
4. Electrochemical Reduction of CO2; Molecular electrocatalysis for nitrogen to ammonia interconversion
5. Solid State Chemistry of Modular Metal Chalcogenides Topological Materials for Sustainable Energy Conversion: Hydrogen Evolution, CO2 Reduction, Thermoelectrics
6. Development and optimization of metal nanoparticle based photocatalysts, sunlight to hydrogen production, Single-particle spectroscopy, Optical characterization of quantum dots and perovskite nanocrystals
7.Small molecule activation, Catalysis with main group compounds, Low-valent main group compounds, Dinitrogen and carbon dioxide fixation using 3d-transition metal complexes
8. Ultrafast dynamics in solar energy and optoelectronic materials; Perovskites, organic photovoltaics and molecular aggregates; Femtosecond laser spectroscopy
9. Development of novel organocatalysts, Application of organocatalysis to the asymmetric synthesis of bioactive molecules
10. Chemical Biology, Cancer therapeutics, Drug Discovery
11. Synthesis of Fluorescent dyes, polymers, and bioimaging
12. Chemical biology of organelles, small molecule and nanoscale material development for targeting organelles in cancer
13. Photosensitizers for Photodynamic Therapy (PDT) and design of novel photo redox catalysts for organic transformations
14. Environmental Chemistry of Adsorptive materials, rare earth elements and Nitrogen harvesting, Food Chemistry, Detection and Mitigation of Food Hazards -
Civil Engineering
1. Geotechnical Engineering: Dynamic behavior of soils, soil liquefaction, suction and collapse of unsaturated soils, constitutive modeling of soils, geotechnical earthquake engineering, geosynthetics
2. Water Resources Engineering: Machine learning architectures for hydrological sciences, resilience of urban water distribution systems, land surface hydrologic modeling, remote sensing applications in hydrology, climate change impacts and risk assessment on water resources, dam breach and levee breach hydraulics, integrated urban water management, blockage/leak detection in pipes, modeling of floods and droughts
3. Structural Engineering: Fire engineering, tall structures, performance-based earthquake engineering of structures, probabilistic seismic hazard and ground motion characterization, seismic isolation of nuclear structures, structural health assessment and monitoring, resilience of infrastructure, computational solid mechanics, 3D concrete printing, topology optimization, multiscale material modeling, blast engineering
4. Environmental Engineering: Aerosols and air quality, indoor air quality, pollution mitigation
5. Transportation Engineering: Mechanistic modeling of flexible and rigid pavements, pavement-environment interaction, urban sustainability, AI/ML applications in transportation engineering
6. Construction Materials: Sustainable building materials, high-performance concrete, life cycle assessment, characterization techniques -
Cognitive and Brain Science
1. Learning, Memory
2. Motor Control, Movement Disorders, Rehabilitation, Visuo-motor control and processing,
3. Emotion
4. Attentional selection and control
5. Visual Cognition, Embodied Cognition, Multlingual Cognition
6. Robotics, Human Robot Interaction
7. Decision Making
8. Tactile Hallucinations in Schizophrenia
9. Brain Connectivity
10. Tactile Perception
11. Bilingual Processing and Mental Lexicon
12. Language Acquisition
13. Multisensory Perception
14. Curiosity
15. Human-computer interaction and Brain-Computer interface -
Computer Science and Engineering
1. Theoretical computer science, Computational complexity, Algebra and computation, Algorithms;
2. Machine learning; Game theory;
3. Formal methods and verification;
4. Quantum machine learning, Natural language Processing, Large Language Modelling;
5. Computer Vision, Computer Graphics, Deep Learning Applications for Vision and Graphics;
6. Human-computer interaction, Brain-computer interface, Eye-tracking, Explainable AI, Medical imaging, Artificial intelligence of things, eHealth;
7. Software Engineering using Generative AI, Empirical Software Engineering, Software Testing, Mining Software Repositories;
8. System security, Web security, Usable privacy and security;
9. AI hardware design, Processor design and validation, Hardware Security, AI for Hardware Design and Test.
10. Graph neural networks, GNNs for citywide simulation.
11. Computer Networks, Network Security, Distributed Systems, Cloud computing and Computer Architecture -
Earth Sciences
1. Climate Change, Water Resources,
2. Solid Earth, Mineralogy and Mineral Physics, High Pressure Metamorphism,
3. Geothermal Energy, Carbonate Depositional Systems, Sea level change
4. Geophysics, Geodynamic Modelling, Statistical Seismology, Numerical modeling of landscapes,
5. River Science, Earth Surface Processes (ESP), tectonic geomorphology, DEM Applications in ESP
6. Natural Hazards and risk, Remote sensing & GIS,
7. Environmental Archaeology, Geoarchaeology,
8. Archaeology, Ceramic Petrology, Ancient Technology,
9. Mircopalaeontology and Palaeoclimate. -
Electrical Engineering
1. Nanoelectronics, Nanoscale Semiconductor Devices, Nanotechnology, Advanced Semiconductor Devices, Emerging Memories, Multi-scale and Multi-physics modeling, Semiconductor device and process modeling, 2D Materials
2. VLSI Design, Computing in Memory for ML, AI Hardware, Hardware Security, Computer Architecture
3. Analog Circuits, High-Frequency Analog Circuit Design, Mixed-signal IC Design, Power Management IC (PMIC) Design, IoT Electronic System Design
4. Semiconductor Manufacturing, Computational Lithography
5. Biomedical Signal Processing, Human Computer Interaction
6. Computer Vision, Image and Video Processing, Computer Graphics, Deep Learning
7. Adaptive Signal Processing, Array Signal Processing, Audio and Speech Signal Processing
8. Control Systems, Estimation Theory
9. Power Systems and Smart Grid
10. Electrical Machines and Power Electronics
11. Smart power electronics for Renewable Energy Integration and Electric Vehicles
12. Photonic Sensors, Fibre-optics, Nanophotonics, Electromagnetic Metamaterials, Computational Electromagnetics
13. Next-generation ultrasound imaging and therapy -
Humanities and Social Sciences
1. Indian Writing in English, Representation of Women in Indian English Literature or Indian-English and Bengali literature, Indian Diasporic Literature in English
2. History of Northeast India in the Modern period, History of Food, Religion, Caste and Communities
3. Development Studies
4. Protohistoric Archaeology, Material Analysis in Archaeology, Conservation and Management of Cultural Heritage, GIS and Remote Sensing in Archaeology
5. Ancient Indian Technologies, Northeast Indian Archaeology and Repatriation
6. Education, Educational Technology, Teacher Professional Development, Learning Sciences
7. Psychoanalysis
8. Continental Philosophy
9. Global Modernist Studies -
Materials Engineering
1. Interfaces, phase transformations and materials design
2. Antimicrobial polymers, Nanoparticles for drug delivery
3. Modeling of metal additive manufacturing process using OpenFOAM, AI/ML in materials processing
4. Quantum materials and multifunctional devices: synthesis, structure-property correlations, and device fabrication.
5. Thin Film Fabrication, (Opto)electronic materials, Low emissivity coating, Thermal barrier coating development
6. Microstructure (XRD,SEM,TEM)-Mechanical Property correlation in precipitate hardened metallic alloys; Sintering of metallic powders
7. Alloy Design (Al-, Cu-, Fe- based, High Entropy alloys, Superalloys), Hydrogen Embrittlement, Nuclear Irradiation
8. Self-cleaning and Anti-corrosive surfaces, Oil-Water Separation
9. Smart Materials, Biomaterials, Metal organic frameworks, Nanomaterials, Nanomedicine -
Mathematics
1. Arithmetic Geometry
2. Analytic Number Theory
3. Partial Differential Equations
4. Numerical Analysis and Partial Differential Equations
5. Functional Analysis/Operator Algebras -
Mechanical Engineering
1. Thermofluids: Fluid Mechanics and Heat transfer, Compressible flows, Turbulence, Combustion and propulsion, Fuel cells, Energy Systems, Battery Thermal Management, Complex Fluids, Porous media, Boiling, Condensation and frosting.
2. Robotics and Dynamics Systems: Control systems, Robotics, Robot learning, Human-robot interactions, Nonlinear dynamics and wave propagation
3. Theoretical and Applied Mechanics: Material Mechanics, Biomechanics, Fracture mechanics, Damage Mechanics, Beams, Composites.Design
Communication Design: Visual design for EdTech, Educational Multimedia using new mediums, Gamification to achieve engagement in online education
Design for Education: Design of AI and robots for learning, Designing maker spaces-based learning environments.
Experience Design: Game Studies and Game Design Theory, Designing Interactions for everyday AI, Player Experiences and Experience Design, Applied Game Design -
Physics
1. Theoretical Particle Physics: Flavor Physics, Dark Matter, Beyond Standard Model Phenomenology
2. Gravitational Wave Astronomy
3. Theoretical High-Energy Physics:Scattering amplitude & gravitational wave, Topological Quantum Field theory and quantum Information & quantum many-body physics
4. Quantum chromodynamics (QCD) at high temperature and strong interaction physics, Hot QCD matter, heavy quark dynamics in hot QCD medium, impact of magnetic field and spin to quark-gluon plasma
5. Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics: Strongly correlated systems, Superconductivity, Magnetism, Quantum transport, Entanglement and Quantum Information, Quantum Hall Effects
6. Experimental Condensed Matter: related to semiconductor solar cells
7. Experimental research-2D material based Fuel cell technologies, Quantum Transport- Topological insulators and Weyl semimetals, Ionic Memristors for nueromorphic computing,
8. Renewable energy harvesting, optoelectronic, photoelectrochemical and sensing applications of functional materials and composites
9. Experimental Soft Condensed Matter Physics- Flow ad self-assembly of complex fluids
10. Experimental Soft and Active Matter Physics
11. Quantum Optics, Open Quantum Systems, Ultracold Atomic Physics, Quantum Sensing, Quantum Thermodynamics
12. Nanomagnetism and Spintronics
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