Short Term Fellowship under the Human Resource Development Programme for Health Research(STFHRDPHR)

Overview

About STFHRDPHR

For the 2025-26 cycle the Department of Health Research declared 51 successful proposals under the short term fellowship abroad and four under the short term fellowship at Indian institutes. Same programme, the same words "short term" in both names, and two very different sets of odds, age bars and rates behind them. Anyone reading the scheme title on a listing page is reading two routes at once, so the first thing worth settling is which of the two you are actually eligible for.

This is one component of the Human Resource Development Scheme for Health Research, which the Department of Health Research (DHR) runs under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and implements through the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). The scheme carries fifteen components in all, from an undergraduate studentship through to start-up grants, and this one is built for a person who already holds a regular teaching or research post and wants a focused stint elsewhere without giving that post up, per the DHR HRD scheme guidelines amended on 20 December 2025.

The training is deliberately brief. At an Indian host institute it runs one to three months; abroad it runs fifteen days to three months. Nothing about it resembles a studentship or a doctoral fellowship: there is no degree at the end, no thesis, and nothing on offer to a student. What DHR is buying is a technique or a method carried back into a medical college or research institute that does not currently have it, in the priority areas the scheme names, among them clinical trials, genomics, toxicology, health economics and medical ethics.

Two details shape everything downstream. The applicant stays a full-time employee of the parent institute throughout, and the money is released to that institute rather than to the fellow. The parent employer is a participant in this fellowship, not a bystander who signs a form.

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

There is no fixed annual date. DHR opens a call, publishes it on the schemes portal and through newspaper advertisements, and extends it when volumes require, so the pattern reads better from the last two cycles than from a calendar.

The last row is the one to check before planning around this component. The 2025-26 call document listed nine programmes and carried the short term fellowship at Indian institutes at serial number three, closing on 31 May 2025. The 2026-27 call lists eight, and neither Indian institute fellowship appears among them. Nor do they appear in the notice that later extended four of those eight to 15 June 2026.

Whether that is a pause or a permanent drop, DHR has not said either way. The honest position is that the domestic route has no open window right now, and the abroad window for this year closed on 15 July 2026.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

The qualifying degree is broadly the same on both routes, and the age bar is not. A candidate needs either a medical or dental postgraduate degree, or a bachelor's or master's qualification in an allied field carried up to a Ph.D. in health or biomedical research, and must be an Indian citizen working in India.

That twelve year gap runs the way most applicants assume it does not: the foreign placement stays open far later in a career than the domestic one. A single ceiling of 55 years is what the scheme's public listing carries, and it fits neither route, nor does it appear in the current guidelines or in the version they replaced, where the only 55 is a marks percentage attached to a different component. The figures that decide an application are the per-route ones above, read against the age printed in the call you are answering, which for the abroad round of 2026-27 was again below 57.

The abroad route became much easier to reach in the latest revision. The version it replaced, dated 20 May 2025, demanded at least fifteen years of experience for a fifteen day fellowship and at least ten years for a one to three month one. The amendment dated 20 December 2025 is a single line against that clause, and it drops both bars to a flat three years for the whole fifteen day to three month range. The current text also names DNB among the abroad route's qualifying medical degrees where the older one did not, while the domestic component's degree list still stops at M.D., M.S. and M.D.S.

One condition sits outside the applicant's control. The employer or head of institution has to forward the application with a written statement that the candidate will be treated as a full-time employee for the fellowship period, and on the abroad route that the institute will disburse the money on DHR norms once it arrives. On that route a candidate from a private college or university also has to attach an All India Council for Technical Education recognition letter, which the domestic component's eligibility list does not ask for.

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

The source record publishes no exclusion list, so the bars worth knowing are the ones written into the guidelines rather than into a rejection notice. A domestic applicant is out if they have already taken a fellowship of one month or longer from any Central or State Government agency for similar training. On the abroad route the same idea is worded as a time bar: no similar fellowship from any Government of India or state agency in the last three years.

Two more disqualifiers are financial rather than personal. Training taken inside the fellow's own institute earns neither stipend nor grant, so a placement that never leaves the campus is unfundable even where it makes academic sense. The contingency grant on the domestic route is payable only to an outstation candidate. The fellowship is non-transferable as well, which rules out handing an award to a colleague when the approved dates stop working.

A practical one catches host institutes rather than fellows. Grants cannot be received into an account held with a private sector bank: the guidelines require the host institute's banking to sit with a public sector bank or a regional rural bank.

Continuation

Renewal conditions

Nothing here renews. The award is a single block of one to three months, with no second term written into the component and no route to convert it into the longer fellowship that sits beside it in the same scheme.

What does continue is an obligation. Within six months of completing the training the fellow has to submit a detailed research proposal, in the prescribed format, for an ad hoc research grant built on the concept proposal in the original application. Miss that and the guidelines treat the training itself as incomplete rather than merely unrewarded, which is a harder consequence than most short fellowships attach to their closing paperwork.

What you get

Award & benefits

Money moves in one direction on this component: DHR to ICMR, ICMR to the parent institute, parent institute to the fellow on the concurrence of its head. The fellow receives no departmental transfer directly, and the institute files a utilisation certificate under the General Financial Rules together with an audited statement of accounts.

The guidelines document states the domestic contingency figure twice and not identically. The component section puts it at Rs 30,000 with a further Rs 20,000 for review meetings, while the specific terms in Annexure-III describe a one-time contingency of Rs 20,000 towards reaching an outstation host institute, reimbursed by the parent organisation. Treat the sanction letter as the operative figure and ask the institute's accounts section which reading it has been funded on.

The abroad figures carried on the scheme's myScheme record are older than the ones in the table, and the guidelines keep their own account of the change. An amendment table inside the same document, headed 23 August 2024, shows the abroad contingency moving from Rs 30,000 plus Rs 20,000 for review meetings, with a US$ 600 conference grant, to the Rs 75,000 and Rs 20,000 mediclaim heads that stand today, and the abroad duration widening from one to three months to fifteen days to three months. A listing that still quotes the earlier numbers, or a single duration of one to three months for both routes, is describing the component as it stood before that.

Salary is untouched either way. The parent institute keeps paying salary, leave, medical benefits, gratuity, provident fund and pension through the fellowship period on its own rules, and DHR carries no liability for any of it. On the abroad route 10% of the stipend is held back and released only after the fellow returns and the utilisation certificate and original receipts are settled.

• For Training In Indian Institutes (1-3 Months): Stipend: ₹40,000/- per month (if training is at a different station); ₹20,000/- per month (if training is at the same station). - Travel Support: Travelling expenses are provided as per Travelling Allowance rules of the parent organization. - Contingency Grant: One-time grant up to ₹20,000/- for local travel, meetings, and related expenses.
• For Training In Foreign Institutes (1-3 Months): Stipend: US $3000/- per month or equivalent in other foreign currency. - Air Travel: Economy class airfare by Air India via the shortest route from parent institute to host institute. - Contingency Grant: One-time grant up to ₹30,000/- for visa, insurance, local expenses, meetings; additional ₹20,000/- for attending review meetings. - Conference Grant: US $600/- for attending conferences or institutes of interest with approval.

What to prepare

Documents required

The formats live in one place and are easy to collect from the wrong pile. On the DHR portal they sit under the heading for long and short term fellowships at Indian and foreign institutes, and the form written for this component is the one labelled other technical details for short term scientist, per the HRD guidelines and forms page. Downloading the long term scientist form by mistake is an easy way to lose a submission window.

Three of the attachments decide whether the file can be read at all, and none of them is inside the applicant's own control. The certificate by the head of institute has to carry the full-time-employee statement. The letter of acceptance has to come from the host institute the applicant has already approached. The mentor consent letter has to name the training programme, its duration and the proposed date of initiation, so an approximate start date is not enough. Each of those needs somebody elsewhere to sign, which is why applications tend to fail on the calendar rather than on merit.

The mandate form from the working institute is the banking instrument, and it is the one item on the list that has to match an institutional account rather than anything the applicant holds. The rest of the list is post-award rather than pre-award: the utilisation certificate and statement of expenditure, the completion report, and on the abroad route a claim sheet for the international fellowship.

Step by step

How to apply

Applications are online and no hard copy is accepted. The domestic components and the fellowships abroad are submitted through two different portals, and the call for the year names which.

Domestic components run through the DHR Electronic Project Management System. The sequence is register, verify the email through the link that arrives, complete the profile with personal details, then education and experience, then publications, awards and patents where they exist, and only then open proposal submission and pick the sub-scheme under HRD, per the DHR e-PMS submission instructions. Those profile sections are gates rather than suggestions: the proposal form does not open until the mandatory ones are complete.

The abroad route was pointed somewhere else for the current year. The call for applications dated 22 April 2026 sends short term and long term fellowship abroad applicants to a separate ICMR international fellowship portal, while keeping the eligibility documents and guidelines on the DHR site.

Where an Application Actually Shows Up

There is no status SMS and no email notification of a result. Queries about a submitted application are raised through the e-PMS portal itself, as the 2026-27 call for research proposals states, and anything that looks like a portal fault goes to the e-PMS technical address rather than to the scheme desk.

Outcomes appear as a PDF instead. DHR publishes a declaration of result on the announcements list of its schemes portal, naming each successful principal investigator with a project ID, which is how the result for the Indian institute fellowships for financial year 2025-26 was issued on 24 September 2025. Selection is not payment: that notice records that release of grant depends on completing documentary and codal formalities including ethical clearance, and since the grant lands with the parent institute, a fellow chasing money after selection is asking their own accounts section, not the portal.

How winners are picked

Selection process

Proposals are screened and evaluated by expert committees constituted by the Secretary DHR and approved by an approval committee chaired by the same officer. The 2026-27 call restates that two-stage test in its own words and adds the condition that binds everything: approval by the technical evaluation and project approval committees, and availability of funds under the scheme. Research on human participants or animals needs clearance from the institute's own ethics committee before it can be funded.

The scale is worth knowing before anyone rearranges a year around this. DHR named 51 successful proposals under the short term fellowship abroad in the result declared on 21 November 2025, against four names on the Indian institute list for the same year.

That asymmetry is planned rather than accidental. The scheme's own component-wise targets in Annexure-I of the guidelines set 45 short term Indian institute fellowships across the whole 2021-22 to 2025-26 period, with a note that the actual number moves with applications received and funds available. The abroad call says plainly that the process is competitive and that applying to a particular international institute carries no assurance of being selected.

Fine print

Terms & conditions

The fellowship starts on the date printed in the fellowship order, not on the date the host institute happens to be ready. Once approved, the mentor and the laboratory or medical institution cannot be changed except with permission, which the guidelines' amendment record puts with the Joint Secretary, DHR, so the host is effectively locked at application. Travel planning is the fellow's own responsibility and any cancellation or penalty charge falls on the fellow.

Closing out the award takes four separate pieces of paper, as the scheme guidelines set out: a final work report in the prescribed format within four weeks of completing the training, a confidential assessment sent to DHR by the mentor or trainer, relieving and joining reports forwarded by the competent authorities of both institutes, and the research grant proposal described above. Beyond that sits a five year reporting expectation, in which the fellow puts the technique to work at the parent institute and reports the resulting publications, grants, projects and capacity building back to DHR.

The domestic route carries no bond. An earlier text required a surety bond of Rs 3.00 lakh to the parent institute and three years of service at it after the training; the amendment table headed 23 August 2024 records that norm as removed, and the specific terms for training at an Indian institute no longer restate it.

The abroad route adds an obligation with teeth. The fellow is designated a DHR-ICMR International Fellow, executes a service bond of Rs 5.00 lakh with the parent institute and undertakes to serve it for at least three years after returning. A fellow who does not return, or who fails any of these requirements, is liable to repay the whole expenditure including airfare in one lump sum within a month, against an undertaking from guarantors on a Rs 50 non-judicial stamp paper. Political clearance and a copy of the visa have to reach the parent institute before any money is released.

Get help

Contact

Scheme questions go to the HRD desk at DHR by email at dhr-hrdschemes@gov.in, the address printed on the current abroad call. Portal problems, registration failures and upload errors go instead to the e-PMS technical address, epms.dhr@icmr.gov.in, given in the submission instructions. Anything about a proposal already submitted is raised inside the e-PMS portal rather than by email. The department's postal address, as it appears on its result notices, is the Department of Health Research, 2nd Floor, IRCS Building, Red Cross Road, New Delhi.

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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