National Science Chair- Scientific Excellence(NSC-SE)

Overview

About NSC-SE

The result ANRF published for the 2025 round of the National Science Chair fits on a single sheet: 11 selections under Mode-1 and one under Mode-2, placed at PRL Ahmedabad, IISc Bengaluru, IISER Pune, CSIR-CDRI Lucknow, IUCAA Pune, IIT Bombay and the M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation. The award is a research position for a scientist who has already superannuated, and the scientist concerned has no way of entering their own name for it. Somebody senior enough to sit on ANRF's nominator list has to do that, and only in a year when ANRF opens a call against a seat that has fallen vacant.

The National Science Chair recognises resident Indian scientists who have superannuated and are still doing research in science, technology, engineering, mathematics or medicine. ANRF runs it in two modes, and the myScheme entry titled Scientific Excellence is the first of them. Mode-1 supports a senior scientist who stays active in research after superannuation but no longer has a formal supporting arrangement behind that work; Mode-2 recognises science leadership, meaning the mentoring, the innovative work and the policy contribution of a scientist with an international reputation as an R&D leader. A nominee has to choose one mode, and the two carry very different money and very different numbers of seats.

How many chairs can exist at one time is the figure the scheme summaries leave out. ANRF restricts Mode-1 to a maximum of 30 positions and Mode-2 to a maximum of 5, and it says plainly that calls will not be periodic and will be made from time to time subject to the vacancies available in a year (ANRF, National Science Chair guidelines). A nominee is therefore not waiting for an annual cycle to come round, but for a sitting chair to finish or a seat to go unfilled.

The administering body has changed, and the paperwork shows it. The scheme is now published under the Anusandhan National Research Foundation, established through an Act of Parliament, the ANRF Act, 2023 (ANRF, About Us). The portal lists the chair twice over, once in ANRF's own programme menu and once under the erstwhile SERB awards menu it inherited, and the guideline text itself now reads ANRF throughout, down to the note about an award "if offered by ANRF" (ANRF, National Science Chair guidelines). The 2025 call went out on ANRF letterhead and directed nominations to www.anrfonline.in (ANRF, Call for Nominations for National Science Chair). The myScheme record still describes the scheme as a Science and Engineering Research Board one and still gives the SERB portal, which was accurate when it was written and is now the older account of the same scheme (myScheme, National Science Chair, Scientific Excellence).

The 2025 selections were published as a one-page list of names and host institutions (ANRF, Selected Nominations for National Science Chair 2025). Nothing beyond the name and the host institute is stated there, and nothing more should be read into it.

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

Both windows are quoted from the announcements strip on ANRF's own website, and the later of the two has now closed. ANRF has not attached an opening date to that extended call, and because calls are made from time to time against available vacancies rather than on a fixed annual calendar, no date for the next one is published anywhere. That strip is where a fresh call shows up first.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

The bar that decides most cases is age, and the myScheme summary does not carry it. ANRF frames the whole scheme around nominees above 65 years who have superannuated, and stretches that to a scientist with at most six months of service left before turning 65 after the closing date of nominations. Beyond the age line, a Mode-1 nominee has to be an active resident Indian scientist or academician with an outstanding research record in STEM or medicine, particularly over the last five years, and must already hold recognition from a national or international scientific body, such as a fellowship of a prestigious academy or an S&T award. The nominee is either affiliated to an academic institution or R&D lab, or has the future host institution's consent on the subject of the proposed work (ANRF, National Science Chair guidelines).

Mode-2 holds that age line exactly where Mode-1 puts it and changes only what is being measured. It asks for a distinguished resident Indian scientist in STEM or medicine, particularly over the last 10 years, who is recognised as a science leader by national or international scientific bodies. Where Mode-1 asks what you are still producing, Mode-2 asks what standing you have built.

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

Two conditions disqualify a nominee outright, and ANRF prints them as a note under the eligibility list rather than as an exclusions section of their own. A nominee must not hold any administrative role or function, and must not be drawing an honorarium, fellowship or salary from any other institute or organisation at the time the award is initiated. Both tests bite at initiation rather than at nomination, so a serving vice-chancellor or director is being asked to have let the post go by the time the chair starts (ANRF, National Science Chair guidelines).

The condition continues to bite after the award. A Mode-1 position stands terminated from the date the chair accepts any other position that yields a regular salary, honorarium or fellowship.

Continuation

Renewal conditions

The chair runs for three years to begin with and can be extended by a maximum of two more, on the recommendation of the National Science Chair Advisory Committee. The material that committee reviews is the chair's own annual account: a detailed technical report on the work carried out during the preceding year up to 31st March, covering direct scientific contribution or the promotion of scientific research (ANRF, National Science Chair guidelines). ANRF does not publish a separate extension form, a scoring rubric or a date by which an extension request has to reach it.

What you get

Award & benefits

Both modes pay the same fellowship and differ sharply on the research grant.

The research grant is spent under the host institute's norms, on research personnel, equipment, travel including international travel, and contingency. Equipment bought from the contingency grant becomes the property of the host institute when the tenure ends, with a narrow set of listed items where retention by the awardee is settled under the government rules that apply to those items.

• An amount of ₹1.5 lakhs per month will be given to the awardee as a fellowship.
• The Research Grant in this case will be ₹25 lakhs per annum.
• For overhead expenses, ₹1.0 lakh per annum will be given to the host institution.
• Note: The grant shall be used for manpower, equipment, travel (including international), contingency, etc. It needs to be utilized as per the norms of the Host Institute. Items purchased out of the contingency grant will be the property of the Host Institute after the completion of tenure. However, in certain listed items, their retention by the awardee will be decided in accordance with the existing government rules and regulations on the subject.

What to prepare

Documents required

Three documents travel with the nomination, and the host institution writes only one of them. The research proposal, required for Mode-1 nominations only, sets out the introduction, objective, methodology, budget and expected outcome, and the online form takes it as a single PDF of no more than five pages. The other two are a certificate from the nominee and an endorsement certificate from the head of the institution, both of which ANRF publishes as downloadable templates on the scheme page itself (ANRF, National Science Chair guidelines). Using ANRF's own template matters more here than it would on an ordinary application, because the endorsement is the host institute committing to house the chair.

Step by step

How to apply

There is no applicant on this scheme, only a nominee and a nominator. ANRF invites the proposal from a defined set of senior office holders: current and former presidents of the national science academies, including engineering, agriculture and medicine, directors of institutions such as IISc Bengaluru, the IISERs, the IITs, the NITs and the national laboratories, vice-chancellors of universities, members of the Scientific Advisory Councils to the Prime Minister and the Cabinet, members of the governing bodies of ANRF, and secretaries to the Government of India in ministries and departments (ANRF, National Science Chair guidelines). The completed nomination is routed through the head of the institution where the scientist intends to work.

The portal splits the work between the two of them. The nominee registers at www.anrfonline.in, fills the nominee, qualification, employment, professional recognition, research index, publication and patent sections under the nomination form for National Science Chair, uploads the proposal PDF and the nominator's details, and then clicks Send to Nominator. The nomination is not with ANRF at that moment. It is with the nominator, who gets an email carrying a link to the filled form and can either submit it to ANRF or send it back to the nominee for revision.

What Happens Once the Nominator Submits

The portal notifies both the nominee and the nominator that the submission went through, so the confirmation email is the first tracking signal and the one worth keeping. After that the wait is measured from the selection committee, not from the closing date: ANRF says notification usually follows approximately four to six weeks after the selection committee meeting, and that it will not give personalised information before that point (ANRF, National Science Chair guidelines). The result itself appears as a public PDF of selected nominations on the ANRF website, which is where the 2025 names were posted (ANRF, Selected Nominations for National Science Chair 2025). For anything the portal cannot show, the scheme's own address is ns-chair@anrf.gov.in.

How winners are picked

Selection process

The National Science Chair Advisory Committee, which ANRF constituted to oversee the chairs, examines every nomination for merit and recommends who should be selected; ANRF then takes the funding decision on those recommendations. The committee sets its own assessment criteria, and the guidelines say these will generally rest on three things: the nominee's research track record and international standing in the field, the quality and originality of the proposed research plan, and the ability to mentor young researchers and push the advancement of S&T talent in the country (ANRF, National Science Chair guidelines).

Only the first of the three looks backwards at a finished career; the research plan and the mentoring criterion both ask what the nominee would do with the chair, which is why five pages carry more weight here than their length suggests. The same committee also reviews progress and extension, so the body that selects a chair is the body that later decides whether the chair continues.

Fine print

Terms & conditions

For the tenure of the chair the awardee works in affiliation with a recognised research institute or university located in India, and every rupee of the grant is released through that host institute rather than to the individual. The host carries the accounting duty in return: it submits an audited statement of accounts and a utilisation certificate to ANRF, and the release of subsequent instalments depends on those statements arriving. When the position ends, the host institute has 60 days to complete the final adjustment and settlement of accounts (ANRF, National Science Chair guidelines).

Two more clauses attach to the output rather than to the money. ANRF support has to be acknowledged in all publications and patents that come out of the chair, and intellectual property arising from the work is governed by the host institute's norms rather than by ANRF's. The chair remains free to raise additional research funding from other agencies, which is a different thing from drawing another fellowship. ANRF also reserves the right to revise or amend these rules when it finds it necessary.

Get help

Contact

The scheme has its own mailbox at ns-chair@anrf.gov.in. The programme officer is Dr. Magesh Kumar K.K, Scientist E, reachable on 011-26511044 and 26552117, and the programme director is Dr. A.V. Balachandar, Scientist F, on 011-26511091 and 26552236, both of them working out of Block II, Technology Bhavan, New Mehrauli Road, New Delhi 110016. Problems with the portal itself, as against the scheme, go to support@anrfonline.in on 011-26552179 and 26552197 (ANRF, National Science Chair guidelines).

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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