The objective of the Post Doctoral Fellowships under Singh-Obama 21st Century Knowledge Initiative 2012 for Indian young scholars is to provide them an opportunity to have international collaborative research opportunities, training in advanced techniques and technologies in emerging fields, thereby furthering their research capacity and ability to contribute to higher education with global perspective and forging long-term  relationships with distinguished experts in these fields in USA.

These awards will provide an excellent opportunity to young Indian researchers (permanent faculty), under the age of 40 years to interact with the American academic/scientific community and get first hand information of the developments taking place at the international level and acquaint themselves with new academic and scientific research methods and to participate in collaborative research projects. It will enable young Indian  researchers to carry out a clearly defined research project and/or acquire newly emerging research techniques and technologies at a place of their choice in USA for a period of up to 12 months. This fellowship would be called a Post Doctoral Fellowship under Singh-Obama 21st Century Knowledge Initiative 2012.

Post Doctoral Fellowship

Total Number of Fellowships : 300

Fellowship: “The Fellow will be entitled to fellowship amount of US $ 3000 per month.” The minimum period of the fellowship would be 6 months and maximum period of fellowship would be 12 months. "Fellow will also be entitled to a one time personal contingency grant of upto a maximum of Rs. 50,000 to cover for visa, airport transfer, medical insurance etc. Medical insurance expenses, visa fee, airport transfer charges will be met by the fellow from out of this personal contingency grant."

Fellow will also be permitted to travel within USA to attend conferences or visit other institutes of interest with the approval of the advisor at the host institute. The Fellow will be entitled to avail one of the following grants for this purpose.

i) Grant of $ 600 for fellowship period upto 6 months
ii) Grant of $ 1200 for fellowship period beyond 6 months

Air-tickets for all the selected Fellow would be purchased by the respective university/institution by economy class for shortest route from their place of work in India to the place of the American host institute and back. The actual ticket amount would be reimbursed by UGC to the institution for the same on submission of all relevant documents duly certified by the competent authority of the institution.

Rules governing payment of salary, leave, medical, gratuity, GPF and pension etc. of the organization/ institution/ university to which the fellow belongs would continue to be applicable. No liability on any of these accounts will be borne by UGC.

The candidate selected for the award for this fellowship should commence their research within six month period from the date of award announcement. Failure to do so would render the fellow to forfeit the award.

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