IIT Roorkee enrolls female candidates for full-time PhD under SAKUNTALA Fellowship

NEW DELHI: The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee has enrolled female candidates for PhD programmes under the SAKUNTALA fellowship. SAKUNTALA (Scheme for Aspirants of Knowledge UNderTALent Advancement) Fellowship is an initiative to facilitate higher education for female engineering students in the institute.

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Through this fellowship programme, girl students of the centrally funded technical institutes (CFTIs) who are now pursuing engineering courses, or have graduated already, will be able to apply for admission into the IIT Roorkee PhD programmes starting with the first admission cycle of the year 2022 (Autumn Semester).

The 52nd meeting of the Institute Research Committee held on November 30, 2021, had proposed the fellowship scheme which was approved by the 89th Senate of the Institute on December 9, 2021.

Eligibility Criteria for Fellowship

• In this scheme, any female candidate having a BTech, BE, BArch, BDesA Degree from CFTIs with a minimum CGPA score of 8.5 or higher on the lO-point scale will be eligible for direct admission into a PhD programme.
• A major relaxation for the aspirants of higher education under the SAKUNTALA scheme is that the candidates do not need a GATE, CEED, National Level examination score for applying to the PhD programmes of the Institute.

Selection process

• The selection for the admission will be carried out through interviews in the corresponding departments or other academic units. The Institute has also allowed admission of eligible candidates without any restriction in the number of seats.

Talking about this initiative, Professor Apurbba Kumar Sharma, Dean of Academic Affairs, IIT Roorkee, said "SAKUNTALA Fellowship offered by IIT Roorkee is an unique initiative in the Indian higher education system to advance the engineering careers of aspiring females. This initiative will benefit many deserving and talented female graduates from CFTIs who fail to appear in GATE, CEED etc. owing to various reasons. A fellowship like this will also help the institute bridge the gender gap."

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Ajit K Chaturvedi, Director, IIT Roorkee, remarked, "IIT Roorkee has taken this initiative to improve the number of women research scholars in our Engineering departments. We expect it to make a visible impact and hopefully many other institutions will follow this scheme or something similar to improve gender diversity in Engineering disciplines.."