Grants and Writing Resources for Indian Institute of Technology Bombay

At Formula Student Portugal 2026, both IIT Bombay racing teams won their categories outright. The electric car placed first in the Electric Vehicle category and took first in the Engineering Design Presentation and Efficiency events. The driverless team, the first Indian Formula Student team to enter that category, won the Driverless Cup. On 22 and 23 August the 64th Convocation awarded 620 PhD degrees for 2025-26, which the institute reported as the highest number ever awarded at any IIT.

Paying for a PhD

The PhD admissions page lists two Institute assistantships funded through the Ministry of Education. The Teaching Assistantship pays Rs 37,000 a month for the first two years and Rs 42,000 after that, for about eight hours of course or lab work a week. The Research Assistantship pays Rs 42,000, then Rs 47,000, for about 20 hours. Either one runs up to five years or until the thesis is submitted.

Students admitted to the regular PhD programme can be nominated for the Prime Minister's Research Fellowship, which pays Rs 70,000 a month plus a contingency grant of Rs 2 lakh a year. The Academic Office also lists privately funded PhD scholarships. One of them, from Eaton Technologies, adds Rs 1,50,000 for a single national or international conference.

Conference Travel

Students in the PhD and Master's-plus-PhD programmes can apply for financial assistance for an international conference. Under Scheme G1 the ceiling is Rs 3,00,000 for North America, Australia, South America and New Zealand, Rs 2,40,000 for Europe, Africa and the Far East, and Rs 1,80,000 for other regions, covering travel, registration and daily allowance. Support is normally given once in a PhD. A full paper with an oral presentation gets first priority. Abstracts and posters rank lower.

Scholars who already hold a sanction from an agency such as CSIR, DST or DBT can take a refundable advance from the Institute instead, to cover registration, visa and airfare before the agency pays.

Medals and Thesis Prizes

In 2021 two General Atlantic managing directors, one of them an IIT Bombay graduate, endowed the Best Ph.D. Thesis award, instituted in 2010, and it was renamed for the two donors. PhD graduates of the previous two academic years in every department are eligible. At the August 2026 medal ceremony, 50 students received Naik and Rastogi Excellence in PhD Research Awards for 2024-2026.

The medal rules give the President of India Medal for the highest CPI at the end of the fourth year, with a floor of 9.0. Each academic unit awards an Institute Silver Medal. The Dr. Shankar Dayal Sharma Gold Medal looks at extracurricular work and social service as well as grades.

Starting Research as an Undergraduate

On 24 July 2026 more than 1,400 new undergraduates attended Enthuse 2026, a research orientation run by the Industrial Research and Consultancy Centre with EnPoWER, the student research wing. Faculty from many disciplines presented at four venues in the Lecture Hall Complex, and current students talked about their research.

The named undergraduate scholarships are endowed by alumni and other donors and managed by the Office of the Dean, Alumni and Corporate Relations. They combine merit with a parental income limit of Rs 5,00,000, and students apply every year.

The Synopsis and the Thesis

The PhD life cycle runs from coursework and annual progress seminars to a pre-synopsis presentation, then the synopsis, the thesis and a viva voce. The synopsis guidelines ask for 1,000 to 4,000 words that state the candidate's contributions and the gap in existing knowledge that led to the problem. References are normally capped at ten.

The thesis format rules, updated in July 2025, call for A4 pages in 12-point Times New Roman at 1.5 spacing, an abstract of about 500 words, and a declaration of academic honesty after the approval sheet. A PhD thesis is hard-bound in black with gold lettering after the viva, and the Library receives a soft copy in the same format.

Before a synopsis, thesis or conference paper goes out, our editors can check its grammar, consistency and format. See our IIT Bombay dissertation and thesis editing and IIT Bombay essay editing pages, or write to editors@editorsforstudents.com.

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