Dear reader,

Greetings from IndiaBioscience!

We are happy to share that we are restarting our bimonthly (every two months) International Grants and Awareness Programme (iGAP) newsletter!

Through iGAP, we aim to highlight international opportunities in funding, networking and skill-building relevant to the life science community in India. Towards this, iGAP hosts and develops a large set of resources such as dispatches, webinars, podcasts, and social media discussions to create awareness and improve the quality and quantity of international grant applications from Indian life science researchers. iGAP also aims to provide expert guidance on grant-writing, support communities to enable networking, and help connect international funding organisations with Indian researchers.

We recently published Part IV of iGAP Dispatches, with the January 2024 series covering open international funding opportunities for Master’s and PhD students as well as early career researchers with deadlines until March. The entire series of iGAP Dispatches can be found here.

The Department of Biotechnology (DBT) recently opened calls for the Ramalingaswami Re-entry Fellowships for 2023-2024 for post-doctoral researchers who plan to return to India to establish independent careers in the life sciences. The fellowship program has undergone several recent modifications which we discussed in a Virtual Town Hall Meeting on the Revised Ramalingaswami Re-entry Fellowships: opportunities and challenges. The meeting connected prospective Ramalingaswami Re-entry Fellowship applicants from all over the world with current and past awardees of the fellowship program, represented by Divya P Kumar, Durba Sengupta, Karishma Kaushik (also the moderator), and Subhojit Sen. Importantly, our panelists included two senior scientists from DBT– Manoj Singh Rohilla and Sanjay Mishra. The informational meeting saw an in-depth discussion on various aspects of the revised fellowships. The session was co-moderated by Rohini Karandikar.

The full recording of the meeting is available on YouTube and can be found here.

We recently highlighted EMBO’s grants and skill-building opportunities through our community-wide platforms. Applications for the EMBO Scientific Exchange Grants and the Women in Science Lectures are open throughout the year. Watch this space in our upcoming newsletter for more exciting opportunities and updates from EMBO for life science researchers in India!

Recently, we also conducted an informational webinar on the EMBO Young Investigator Programme (EMBO YIP) on 20 February 2024. In the webinar, Gerlind Wallon – programme head of EMBO YIP, and Karim Labib, Professor at the University of Dundee and former YIP selection committee member presented insights on the program and selection criteria. Two current EMBO YIP awardees from India – Gaurav Ahuja from IIIT Delhi and Siddhesh Kamat from IISER Pune presented their motivations to apply for the programme, experiences during the application process, and the advantages of being an EMBO-YIP awardee.

If you missed attending the webinar, click here to watch the recording on YouTube.

Have you been a recipient of an international grant? Or have you mentored a colleague with an international grant application? We invite life science researchers from India who have recently or previously been awarded an international grant, to share their experiences and anecdotes. Your stories can be inspirational for other researchers seeking international grants. If you are interested in sharing your story or mentorship inputs, please let us know through this form.

Shortlisted stories (with only light editing) will be published on the iGAP webpage. Additionally, you may become a part of our mentor database and get a chance to mentor prospective applicants for international grants.

As we gear up for the 16th edition of our Young Investigators’ Meeting at Bhopal, we are happy to share that the meeting will host a series of talks on international funding opportunities for life scientists in India. The talk by Sayam Sen Gupta, representing Humboldt Foundation (AvH) will be posted on our YouTube channel after the meeting. In addition, the EMBO Global Lecture Series talks at YIM 2024 from Frederic Berger (Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology) and Cesar Ramirez-Sarmiento (Pontifica Universidad Catolica de Chile) will be live-streamed on our YouTube channel. Follow us on our YouTube channel, and other social media handles - X/formerly Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, for updates on iGAP from YIM 2024!

We are always looking for new ways to connect the life science community in India to international funding opportunities! Have an idea for a webinar, podcast, article series or want to collaborate on an initiative with us? Write to us at iGAP@indiabioscience.org. We enjoy hearing from you!

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