BHUBANESWAR: Aiming at further improving research in its public universities, the state government has decided to launch a new scheme, Chief Minister Research and Innovation Fellowship Programme (CMRIFP) from this academic year (2023-24).
An enhanced version of the existing Odisha University Research and Innovation Incentivisation Plan (OURIIP), the new fellowship programme would provide a monthly research fellowship grant of Rs 30,000 to 300 research scholars pursuing PhD in state’s public universities for a period of five years. Besides, they will get an annual contingency amount of Rs 50,000 and Rs 30,000 for science and social science subjects respectively. Research scholars will also be helped with publication grants of Rs 50,000 for publishing their work in any of the top-25 journals of the world as the first author.
Officials said this is an improved version of the OURIIP scheme which currently offers Rs 15,000 per month to only NET-qualified research scholars. Once the fellowship scheme is implemented, OURIIP will be discontinued. A meeting on the fellowship programme was held recently in the presence of secretaries of the Higher Education and Finance departments Arvind Agarwal and Vishal Dev respectively.
Higher authorities of Department of Higher Education (DHE) said while the top NET-qualified scholars were selected for OURIIP, the 300 research scholars for the new fellowship scheme will be selected on the basis of an independent common PhD entrance test to be conducted in all state public universities. The scholars need to have first division at the UG and PG level to be eligible for appearing for the entrance exam. Additionally, the language scholars are required to have at least one publication in the UGC Care List of Journals while non-language scholars should have at least one publication in Scopus.
The research scholars apart, competitive seed research funding grants will be provided every year to 60 faculty members with PhD up to the age of 50 years of public universities for a period of two years. In the case of science faculty, the grants will be Rs 10 lakh and Rs 7 lakh for those teaching social sciences and humanities. Eligibility-wise, the faculty members too must have obtained first division in both UG and PG levels. Besides, the top-performing centres of excellence (CoE) in public universities will be provided sustainability funding of Rs 35 lakh- Rs 25 lakh per annum for research.
MORE FUNDS FOR RESEARCH
NET qualification not mandatory for new scheme
60 faculty members upto 50 years of age to get upto Rs 10 lakh per annum as seed research funding grants
Top CoEs to get Rs 35 lakh as sustainability grants