IIT Kharagpur and University of Manchester Announce Dual Doctoral Program, Funding Available for Meritorious Students

IIT Kharagpur and The University of Manchester launched a dual award PhD program, which aims at consolidating and building on existing research collaborations. The program will be offered in various subjects such as environmental geochemistry, biomaterials and Industry 4.0. The selected students will get to work at and learn from professors of both IIT Kharagpur and The University of Manchester.

Professor Stephen Flint, associate vice-president international, The University of Manchester, said: “The dual PhD with IIT Kharagpur is testament to the University’s strategic ambitions to build world-class research links with India and to encourage more student mobility between the two regions.” He further added, “The University of Manchester established research partnerships with IIT Kharagpur some years ago and this dual award PhD program is the next step in deepening our relationship, with academic colleagues in both institutions sharing supervision of the PhD students, who will spend 2 years in Manchester and 2 years in Kharagpur.”

Initially, this program will be offered only to students graduating from the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Indian Institute of Science (IISc) starting from July 2021. The selected students will have to spend a year at IIT Kharagpur, and then complete the rest of the dual doctoral program at Kharagpur and The University of Manchester. Furthermore, full and partial funding will be provided on a competitive basis for four years for a select number of suitably qualified and progressing students.

Students who successfully complete the dual doctoral program will receive recognition from both institutes mentioning the joint nature of the work and the partner institute’s name, says the IIT Kharagpur website. This development makes it the first time IIT Kharagpur is offering a joint program in association with a British university.