WISE Post-Doctoral Fellowship(WISE-PDF)

Overview

About WISE-PDF

The WISE Post-Doctoral Fellowship carries two different monthly figures in the Department of Science and Technology's own paperwork. Its programme guidelines put the fellowship at Rs 55,000 a month; the department's live page for the same scheme prints Rs 67,000. A departmental office memorandum settles it in favour of the higher figure. The number is worth pinning down before you write a proposal, because WISE-PDF is not a top-up on a salary. It is a research project sanctioned in your own name at a host institute, and for up to three years that fellowship is the whole of your income from it.

WISE-PDF is the post-doctorate slot in DST's WISE-KIRAN scheme, and it was carved out of the old Women Scientist Scheme-A when that programme was split by qualification. The doctoral half, WISE-PhD, funds a postgraduate through the degree itself. WISE-PDF starts where that ends: it is for a woman who already holds a Ph.D., MD, MS or MDS and wants to keep working at the bench rather than move into administration or teaching. DST describes the design as an independent project grant, and the wording is literal. You are the principal investigator, you name a scientist mentor, and the money is sanctioned to the institute that agrees to host you.

The one condition most applicants expect is absent. Under WOS-A a break in career was mandatory; under WISE-PDF it is not, and DST says only that women who have had a break are still encouraged to apply. The subject net is drawn tightly: DST funds bench work in five science and engineering disciplines and nothing outside them, so the first test a proposal has to survive is whether the question it asks belongs in a laboratory at all (DST, WISE-PDF programme page).

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

The scheme has no annual deadline in the way a scholarship does, and that is exactly what makes its timing confusing. The guidelines say the call stays open right through the year and that you may apply as soon as you turn 27. The programme page tells a different story at the moment.

The project start date is the one applicants get wrong. A project becomes operative from the day the first grant is released to the institute, not from the sanction order, and the institute or the investigator must intimate that date to DST no later than one month after the grant is received.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

Employment status decides most cases before qualifications do. A regular or permanent post rules you out. A temporary one does not: DST counts project research staff, a post-doctoral fellow and a research associate as temporary assignments, and women in those roles may apply, but the guidelines require them to leave the earlier assignment if the WISE-PDF project is approved (WISE-PDF guidelines).

The age floor is absolute and unusually specific. The minimum is 27 and the maximum 60, and the guidelines state in capitals that women below 27 are not eligible. There is no published relaxation for SC, ST or persons with disability here, which is a real difference from WISE-PhD, where DST publishes a three-year relaxation in the upper age for those categories (DST, WISE-KIRAN). The qualification test is a Ph.D. in basic or applied science, or an equivalent professional doctorate such as MD, MS or MDS, from a recognised university.

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

DST publishes no exclusion list for WISE-PDF anywhere. The bars are real all the same, and they sit in four unrelated corners of the guidelines. Regular employment disqualifies. Age below the floor disqualifies. A husband or close relative cannot be your scientist mentor, and a project cannot carry more than one mentor. On the money side, the sanction follows the named woman scientist and nobody else may draw it, nothing beyond the fellowship and HRA is payable, and money sanctioned for equipment cannot be shifted into the fellowship or research-grant heads, or the reverse (WISE-PDF guidelines).

Continuation

Renewal conditions

There is nothing to re-apply for. WISE-PDF is sanctioned once for its whole duration, and the money then reaches the host institute a year at a time, so what a scholarship would call renewal is a release decision here. The first instalment carries the entire equipment grant plus the first year's recurring costs; every later one needs the previous year's utilisation certificate, an authenticated statement of expenditure, and a detailed annual progress report showing targets against timelines. DST also runs group monitoring workshops where investigators present progress, and it states that subsequent releases follow the reviewing and monitoring committees' recommendations. A no-cost extension of up to six months is possible at the end, and no fellowship is paid during it (WISE-PDF guidelines).

What you get

Award & benefits

The current rate is the higher one. DST's programme page, last updated on 14 Jul 2026, sets out the package below, and the department's written reply in the Rajya Sabha on 20 March 2025 puts the same fellowship at Rs 67,000 a month inside a project envelope of up to Rs 42.6 lakh for three years (PIB).

The Rs 55,000 figure is not wrong, it is superseded, and DST said so in a document of its own rather than leaving readers to date two web pages against each other. An office memorandum of the WISE-KIRAN Division dated 14.02.2024 revised the fellowship for a Ph.D. or equivalent degree holder under WISE-PDF from Rs 55,000 plus HRA to Rs 67,000 plus HRA with effect from 01.01.2023, and directed grantee institutions to pay the arrears where any were owed (DST, revision of fellowship under WISE-KIRAN programmes). The printed guidelines and the myScheme record simply predate that order, which is also why they leave the institutional overhead as nothing more than "as per DST norms" (WISE-PDF guidelines). Your own sanction order still has the last word on the head-wise breakup, because that order is what fixes it for your project, but on the rate itself the memorandum has already answered the question. One line in the guidelines is easy to miss and changes the arithmetic: the fellowship is taxable, and no provident fund, leave travel or medical allowance is payable on top of it.

• Fellowship Amount: ₹55,000/- per month is provided as fellowship along with House Rent Allowance as per Department of Science and Technology (DST) norms. - Research Grant: ₹2,00,000/- per year is provided to support research activities under the programme. - Equipment Support: Financial assistance up to ₹3,00,000/- is provided for the purchase of small equipment. - Institutional Overhead Charges: Additional institutional overhead charges are covered as per applicable norms. - Project Duration: The maximum duration of the project is 3 years.

What to prepare

Documents required

The proposal format does most of the work, and two items in the list decide whether it is accepted at all. The first is the mentor's biodata, signed and carrying recent publications; DST singles it out as the one formality that must be uploaded at submission. The second is proof of age, since the 27-year floor is checked against the date of application rather than a fixed cut-off date. A caste or disability certificate is asked for where it applies, though in this programme it unlocks nothing on the age limit.

A second set of documents falls due after selection rather than before it. Once the approval letter is issued you have three months to file the host institute's savings bank account details, an HRA declaration and mentor details, and the guidelines say the approval stands cancelled if they do not arrive in that window (WISE-PDF guidelines).

Step by step

How to apply

Submission is online and there is no offline route. The guidelines still print the DST-WISE address, online-wosa.gov.in, and that is no longer where DST sends applicants: its WISE-KIRAN page routes every fellowship programme in the division to onlinedst.gov.in, and the WISE-PDF programme page carries the same link at its foot (DST, WISE-KIRAN; DST, WISE-PDF programme page). Register on the address the live pages point to, not the one in the PDF. Two portal rules are worth knowing early: the email address you register with becomes your login and cannot be changed later, and a proposal cannot be edited once it is finally submitted.

Tracking runs on two different systems depending on where you are in the process. Outcomes for the proposals filed in the last cycle were not posted on dst.gov.in at all: they went up on a standalone results site, wisepdfresult.web.app, which the programme page links behind a plain "Click here" (DST, WISE-PDF programme page). After a project is sanctioned the money leaves the WISE portal entirely and is followed in PFMS. Grants move through the Technology Development Board as central nodal agency under the hybrid TSA model, which DST puts at roughly 10-12 days from the date of the sanction order, and the host institute confirms the allocation from its PFMS AGENCYDO login: open TSA, then TSA Hybrid, then New Hybrid Claims, pick scheme 4305-VIGYAN DHARA so the bank account fills itself in, then open the sanction-number dialog and click Search with the query left empty. The project number appears only once the board has assigned the funds, and an allocation that never shows up is the board's to explain, not DST's (DST, checking fund allocation status).

How winners are picked

Selection process

A Subject Expert Committee reads the proposal and gives or withholds technical approval. What follows is a two-step paper trail rather than an interview round: an approval letter first, then a formal sanction order issued on the committee's recommendation and on the latest quotations for the equipment you asked for, which is why those quotations belong in the proposal. The committee can also shorten the project. DST states the duration is generally up to three years but may be less as the committee recommends, so a sanction for two years is a normal outcome rather than a partial rejection (WISE-PDF guidelines).

Fine print

Terms & conditions

A sanction does not make you a DST employee. It makes you a temporary employee of whichever institute agrees to host the project, under that institute's own administrative rules, and the guidelines close the loop by saying the Department will have no liability whatsoever for the principal investigator once the project duration is over. Your attendance register is kept by the institute and produced to DST on demand, and your reporting line runs to the mentor on the institute's duty hours. Two absence rules then sit on top of the institute's leave rules: a stretch longer than 15 days, or 30 days in aggregate, needs DST's consent in advance, and vanishing for three continuous months without telling the Department ends the project outright. Time at a scientific event, in India or abroad, is not counted against either figure, because the guidelines treat it as on duty (WISE-PDF guidelines).

Three further obligations are easy to overlook at proposal stage. Every publication from the project must acknowledge the WISE-PDF grant by reference number, and DST advises the investigator to be first or corresponding author. Under the department's Scientific Social Responsibility guidelines you are expected to spend at least 30 days sharing scientific knowledge with the wider public, through internships, workshops, lectures or popular articles. And equipment bought from the grant belongs to the Government of India, must be procured through GeM where the item is listed there, and cannot be purchased in the third financial year of the project (WISE-PDF guidelines). Moving to a new host institute is allowed once, with both institutes' no-objection certificates, but not in the first six months and not in the final year.

Get help

Contact

For anything specific to this programme the named officer is Shubham Goel, Scientist-C, on 011-26590625 and goel.shubham@gov.in; DST's own WISE-KIRAN team table assigns WISE-PDF and WISE-IPR to him, and the programme page repeats the number (DST, WISE-KIRAN; DST, WISE-PDF programme page). General scheme queries go to the division's own box, enquiry-wosdst@gov.in, on 011-26534166, at Technology Bhavan, New Mehrauli Road, New Delhi 110016 (WISE-PDF guidelines). Check a name against the WISE-KIRAN page before you address a letter to it: the guidelines document still lists Dr Nisha Mendiratta as head of the division, while the page DST maintains now names Dr Umesh Kumar Sharma, Scientist-G, in that role (DST, WISE-KIRAN). Once a project is running, correspondence has to quote the sanction order number and date and be addressed to the programme officer by name.

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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