Indo-French Postdoctoral Research Programme for Women in Science(PROWIS-I)

Overview

About PROWIS-I

Most fellowships that carry the word postdoctoral are aimed at a researcher who has just defended and has no job yet. The Indo-French Postdoctoral Research Programme for Women in Science, filed by its nodal body as PROWIS-I, wants the opposite candidate: a woman scientist with the doctorate behind her and a salaried post already under her, who wants to spend a short stretch of that employment inside a French laboratory. Read the call before you read the label, because the label is what sends the wrong applicants to the form.

PROWIS-I funds a stay of 3 to 4 months in a French institution for a woman researcher based in India, and the mirror stay in India for a woman researcher based in France, under a single annual call from the Indo-French Centre for the Promotion of Advanced Research (PROWIS-I 2025 call, CEFIPRA). CEFIPRA files it under Mobility-Fellowship on its own site, alongside the Raman-Charpak Fellowship, and nowhere near its project-grant programmes.

The centre running it is not a ministry desk. CEFIPRA has existed since 1987 as India's first and France's only bilateral science organisation based outside France, supported on the Indian side by the Department of Science and Technology and on the French side by the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs, and the women's fellowship itself came out of a recommendation made at the second Women in Science seminar that CEFIPRA and CNRS held in Paris in September 2018, which the centre's Governing Body then approved (PROWIS scheme document, CEFIPRA). A woman selected under it is designated an Indo-French PROWIS Fellow.

How many awards exist in a year is written into the scheme document rather than into the call. It sets the postdoctoral arm at six fellowships a year, three for Indian and three for French researchers, with the centre free to move that number up or down as funds allow. The focussed research area is not fixed in the scheme document either; it is announced afresh in each year's open call, so an applicant reading last year's areas may be reading a list that has already changed.

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

No PROWIS call is open as this is written. The programme page on CEFIPRA's site reads that the call is closed for long and short term mobility applications for women scientists and researchers from India and France (Women in Science (PROWIS), CEFIPRA), and the open call the centre currently advertises on its homepage is the collaborative and industry-academia programme with a 30 September 2026 deadline (CEFIPRA). The last PROWIS window closed on 23 September 2025, and CSIR's announcement of that call carried the same date (Indo-French Postdoctoral Research Programme for Women in Science, CSIR). CEFIPRA's general notice lists PROWIS I and II among the calls whose applications are at different stages of evaluation, with results expected in due course (General notice, CEFIPRA).

The pattern of a cycle, rather than a date to wait for, is what an applicant can plan on. The scheme document sets it out for the founding cycle:

Later cycles have kept the shape while moving the months. Results for the 2024 cycle were announced on 10 December 2024, roughly two months after the window shut (PROWIS results 2024, CEFIPRA). CEFIPRA's 2024-25 annual report said the next PROWIS call would be launched on 1 June 2025 with a 75-day application window (Annual Report 2024-25, CEFIPRA); in the event the deadline landed in late September. Announced dates have behaved as intent rather than commitment, so the programme page is what to watch, and the host letter is what should already be in hand while it still reads Call Closed.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

An Indian applicant has to hold a PhD degree and a sanctioned or tenured post in a scientific or academic institution, and the mobility has to take place during her employment period at that institution. Where the call says sanctioned or tenured, the scheme document spells out what it means by a regular position: appointed against a sanctioned post, or in a tenure post that is likely to be renewed once the tenure ends. Read that way, the post has to exist and be funded before the stay begins, which is what removes a contractual project hire carried on someone else's grant and a candidate whose thesis is still under examination.

She must also be an Indian or French citizen attached to a recognised university or research institution, and must not have availed any postdoctoral fellowship in France or India during the last 5 years. Preference is stated twice in the call: for candidates with no international exposure so far, and for candidates with previous research and development experience and publications. CEFIPRA reserves the right to relax the conditions for a potential candidate, which is written into the call rather than left to practice.

The French route printed beside it in the same call asks for something else entirely: a woman who holds a PhD and is currently completing a postdoctoral project. An Indian applicant who reads that clause and takes it as the standard will apply years too early, because her own route asks for the doctorate to be finished and the post to be in hand.

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

A candidate already working on any kind of fellowship is not eligible, and the 2025 call states the same bar from the other direction: this fellowship cannot be availed simultaneously with any other one. A postdoctoral fellowship taken in France or India within the previous 5 years shuts the door as well. None of that is printed under a heading called exclusions, because PROWIS-I publishes none; the disqualifying conditions sit inside the eligibility text of the call and the scheme document (PROWIS-I 2025 call, CEFIPRA, PROWIS scheme document, CEFIPRA).

What the call does not impose is an age ceiling. That silence matters only by comparison: CEFIPRA's other mobility award, the Raman-Charpak Fellowship, caps applicants at a maximum age of 30 years as on 1 April of the call year and rules out students who hold a permanent position (Raman Charpak Fellowship, CEFIPRA). PROWIS-I inverts both of those conditions rather than softening them.

Continuation

Renewal conditions

PROWIS-I is sanctioned once, for one stay of 3 to 4 months that has to sit inside the applicant's employment period, and the guidelines that govern it set out what a fellow owes the centre after the stay ends without opening any second term (PROWIS scheme document, CEFIPRA). A returning fellow is also caught by the five-year bar on having held a postdoctoral fellowship in India or France, so a second PROWIS-I is not something to plan around.

What you get

Award & benefits

Support reaches the fellow as one monthly figure in the currency of the country she travels to, sized to absorb her whole cost of living there.

On top of the monthly amount, the programme carries a to and fro air ticket in economy class between India and France as per CEFIPRA norms, and the incidental charges that make a research stay legal rather than merely possible: insurance coverage, the visa fee, and the carte de sejour. The scheme document sets out no contingency grant, no consumables head and no bench fee for the host laboratory, so the French institution is not being paid to take her.

Because the mobility has to fall inside her employment period at home, the fellowship is layered on an existing appointment rather than replacing one. That is the practical difference between this award and a stipendiary postdoc, and it is why the monthly figure is described as support for daily expenses rather than as a salary.

• For Indian National: Fellowship Euros 2000/- per month along with miscellaneous allowances.
• To and Fro International travel between India and France.
• For French National: Fellowship ₹90,000/- per month along with miscellaneous allowances.
• To and Fro International travel between France and India.

What to prepare

Documents required

The paperwork the call names is standard until the host letter, which is where applications actually fail. The invitation or hosting letter is not a formality: the call requires the reference letter from the host supervisor or institute to speak to three things, namely the relevance of the proposed postdoctoral work at the host institution, the importance of the research topic for both India and France, and the benefit of the fellowship to the applicant's overall research career. A one-paragraph welcome note does not answer any of those.

The short call leaves out the format constraints, and the scheme document supplies them: 2 pages at most for the research proposal in the prescribed format, 2 pages at most for the CV, and the passport scanned front and back. It also fixes the direction of the host relationship: the host supervisor of an Indian woman applicant must be in France, and the reverse for French applicants. The no objection certificate is issued by the head of her employing institution rather than by her supervisor, which makes it the same piece of paper that evidences the sanctioned post she is claiming.

Step by step

How to apply

Applications go in online. The step before the form is the one that takes months: the scheme document puts the burden of finding and corresponding with the proposed host institute on the candidate herself, so an applicant with no French contact is not ready to apply in the week a call opens.

CEFIPRA runs more than one submission system, and picking the wrong one costs time. The mobility portal at mob.cefipra.org describes itself as the application submission portal for mobility programmes, which is the family PROWIS sits in (CEFIPRA mobility portal). The older electronic project proposal management system at cefipraonline.in lists collaborative research projects, the industry-academia programme and seminars or workshops on its front page, and also carries the women in science guidelines page (Women in Science Research Programme, CEFIPRA). Whichever route a live call names is the one to use; the call document itself points applicants to cefipra.org for the current link.

Tracking an application is where expectations need lowering. There is no status dashboard that turns an application number into a decision. CEFIPRA publishes the outcome as a dated results notice on its own site and says selected candidates shall be contacted through email, with a named scientific officer and the director's office listed for queries in the meantime (PROWIS results 2024, CEFIPRA). Checking the programme page and the results notices, rather than refreshing a portal, is the honest method.

How winners are picked

Selection process

The scheme document publishes the criteria the expert committee applies, which is more than most fellowship guidelines do. It lists relevance of the applicant's work as set out in her postdoctoral proposal, academic and scientific excellence, added value to international exchange and future cooperation, and any further criterion the committee itself proposes. Under academic excellence it names the specific markers it wants to see, including a GATE score, NET qualification, research experience, and the list of publications with the impact factor of the journals. Candidates may be asked to present to the committee over video conference, so the written file is not always the last word.

What the committee does with a year's applications is on record. In the second call of 2024 it recommended seven candidates out of 48 applications received, six Indian and one French (Annual Report 2024-25, CEFIPRA). Splitting that across the two arms, the results notice of that cycle names only two Indian women under the postdoctoral arm, one at AIIMS New Delhi and one at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, with the remaining Indian selections falling under the two-week visiting arm. The 2023 cycle was kinder to PROWIS-I specifically, with four Indian women selected under the postdoctoral arm, drawn from CSIR-CIMFR, NICED, IIT Madras and the Institute of Nanoscience and Technology (Annual Report 2023-24, CEFIPRA). Applications are sorted into broad disciplinary areas, and the selections in both years spread across life and health sciences, chemistry, physics, environmental sciences and computing rather than clustering in one field.

Fine print

Terms & conditions

The obligations run past the last day in the lab. A fellow has to submit a detailed scientific work report and a fellowship utilisation certificate once the fellowship is over, and expenditure has to be incurred strictly in line with the guidelines, with re-appropriation between heads of expenditure not admissible. Every publication and presentation that comes out of work done under the programme has to acknowledge the Indo-French Centre for the Promotion of Advanced Research.

The bar on holding another fellowship runs for the length of the stay and is not spent once the form goes in, which is easy to read past in a list of eligibility clauses. The eligible fields are the other moving part, announced in each year's call rather than fixed in the scheme document, so a proposal built around an area funded in a previous cycle is not automatically inside the next one.

Get help

Contact

CEFIPRA works out of 5B, Ground Floor, India Habitat Centre, Lodhi Road, New Delhi 110003, with entry from Gate No. 2. The centre lists its PBAX lines as (+91-11) 2468 2251 and (+91-11) 2468 2252 and its general mail address as contact.ifcpar@cefipra.org, with office hours from Monday to Friday (Contact Us, CEFIPRA). For queries tied to a PROWIS application specifically, the 2024 results notice named Dr Raman Kumar, Scientific Officer, at raman.kumar02@cefipra.org, and the director's office at director.office@cefipra.org (PROWIS results 2024, CEFIPRA).

Source

Official links

Frequently asked questions

From the official scheme FAQ (myScheme)

Read this

Disclaimer

Disclaimer

Scheme details are compiled from myScheme, the Government of India’s official scheme-discovery platform, and are reproduced without alteration. Amounts, deadlines and eligibility change between cycles, so always confirm on the official links above before applying. Expertie does not process applications or charge fees.

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References

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