IISER Thiruvananthapuram (TVM) PhD Admission 2026 (Jan)

Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Thiruvananthapuram invites applications for admission to the PhD Programmes for the academic session Vasanth 2026 commencing in January 2026.

Eligibility Criteria

General Eligibility Criteria

1. 6.5 CGPA on a 10-point scale (or first-class equivalent) or first class in Master’s program in a relevant discipline as declared by the respective university for General/OBC-NCL candidates and a minimum of 50% marks (or a CGPA of 5.5 in the 10-point scale) for SC/ST and PwD candidates. (BE/BTech degree in relevant specialization is admissible for select areas of research in the School of Physics/ Data Sciences/ Earth, Environmental and Sustainability Sciences (see Research Areas))
2. The candidate must have qualified at least one of the following examinations : CSIR-JRF, UGC-JRF (Category-I or II or III) or GATE or other national-level examinations as specified in the document with validity as on 01 January 2026. (see School specific Eligibility Criteria for other national-level examinations considered for the selection).
3. BS-MS/MSc/Integrated MSc students from any of the IISERs/IITs/IISc with a CGPA of 8 or above on a 10-point scale are exempted from national level test eligibility related criteria.
4. JRFs at IISER TVM, recruited under extramural projects, with a valid national-level qualification as specified in point 2.

Relaxation for reserved categories to the eligibility criteria will be applicable as per Government of India rules.

Subject Wise Eligibility Criteria

SCHOOL	RELEVANT AREAS	ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA
Biological Sciences	Biological Sciences/Chemical Sciences/Physical Sciences/ Mathematics/ Bioinformatics/ Agricultural Sciences/ Veterinary Sciences or a Bachelor Degree in Medicine (MBBS).	(General Eligibility 1 AND General Eligibility 2) OR General Eligibility 3 OR General Eligibility 1 with one of the following- DBT-JRF (Category I)/ICMR-JRF: Only candidates whose fellowships are tenable at IISER TVM are eligible. GATE (EY)*: Will be considered only for Ecology/ Evolution/Behaviour. GATE (XL/BT/PH)*: Will be considered only for Bioinformatics/Computational Biology/Theoretical Biology NBHM-JRF: Will be considered only for Bioinformatics/ Computational Biology/Theoretical Biology JGEEBILS (GS-2025)* JEST (Physics)* qualified candidates will be considered only for Computational Biology /Theoretical Biology/ Biophysics/Structural Biology * Depending on the number of applications, a cut-off based on marks/score maybe be imposed to shortlist these candidates OR (General Eligibility 1 AND General Eligibility 4)
Chemical Sciences	Chemical Sciences	(General Eligibility 1 AND General Eligibility 2) OR General Eligibility 3 OR (General Eligibility 1 AND General Eligibility 4)
Physical Sciences	Physical Sciences/Material Science/ Engineering areas closely related to the research areas of School of Physics, IISER TVM	(General Eligibility 1 AND General Eligibility 2)/ JEST 2025 (Physics)) OR General Eligibility 3 OR (General Eligibility 1 AND General Eligibility 4) For the * marked research areas listed below BE/BTech candidates are eligible to apply.
Data Sciences	Computer Science/Data Science /Statistics / Mathematics/ Information Technology/Electronics and Communication Engineering or Engineering areas closely related to the research areas of School of Data Science, IISER TVM. BE/BTech/Engineering areas closely related to the research areas of Data Sciences, IISER TVM.	(General Eligibility 1 AND General Eligibility 2/ JEST 2025 (Theoretical Computer Science)) OR General Eligibility 3 OR (General Eligibility 1 AND General Eligibility 4) For the * marked research areas listed below BE/BTech candidates are eligible to apply.
Earth, Environmental and Sustainability Sciences	MSc or MTech in Marine sciences/ Chemistry/Physics/ Biology/ Mathematics/ Geology /Applied Geology/Earth Science/ Atmospheric Science/ Meteorology/Climate Science/ Oceanography /Water Resources/ Hydrology Ecology/ Agriculture/ Environment Science. BE/BTech/Engineering areas closely related to the research areas of School of Earth, Environmental and Sustainability Sciences, IISER TVM	(General Eligibility 1 AND General Eligibility 2/DBT-JRF/ICAR-JRF/GATE/ JGEEBILS/JEST or equivalent) OR General Eligibility 3 OR (General Eligibility 1 AND General Eligibility 4)
CHPC	See the relevant section in “School and Centre-wise Research Areas Available for PhD Positions” below.	(General Eligibility 1 AND General Eligibility 2) OR General Eligibility 3 OR (General Eligibility 1 AND General Eligibility 4)

Research Areas

Biological Sciences

• Biophysics and Biochemistry
• Cell and Molecular Biology
• Ecology & Evolution
• Genetics and Development
• Infection and Immunity
• Host-Pathogen Interaction
• Neurobiology
• Plant Biology
• Theoretical & Computational Biology

Chemical Sciences

• D-Block Organometallic Chemistry, Small Molecule Activation, Development of Molecular Catalysts for Hydrogenation
• Catalysis for Sustainable Organic Synthesis
• Coordination and Bioinorganic Chemistry
• Development of New Synthetic Methods for Organic Synthesis, Asymmetric Synthesis & Catalysis
• Electrocatalysis for Energy Conversion and Biomass Valorisation
• Inorganic and Materials Chemistry for Energy Applications
• Main Group Chemistry
• Medicinal chemistry, Organic synthesis, Computational drug discovery
• Metabolic chemistry, Organic chemistry, Mass spectrometry
• Organic chemistry, Supramolecular chemistry
• Organic Synthesis and Catalysis, Cross-Coupling Reactions, Machine Learning and AI in organic reactions – Chem informatics
• Physical Organic Chemistry, Photochemistry and Photophysics, Molecular Spectroscopy
• Quantum cluster and Metal-Organic Framework
• Radical Chemistry in Organic Synthesis
• Self-healing Polymers and Biomaterials
• Supramolecular Chemistry, DNA nanotechnology and Cancer therapy
• Supramolecular Chemistry: Molecular Switches, Host-Guest Chemistry and Foldamer Chemistry
• Theoretical and Computational Chemistry
• Theoretical Chemistry; Computational Materials Science
• Theoretical and Computational Physical Chemistry, Chemical Physics and Biophysics
• Total synthesis of natural products and drug molecules, Asymmetric synthesis & catalysis and Medicinal chemistry

Data Sciences

• Machine/Deep Learning, 5G/6G Networking and Communication, Edge/Cloud Orchestration, Internet-of-Things, Distributed Machine/Deep Learning (Federated and Gossip Learning), Smart Applications
• Computer Vision, Deep Learning applications to Medical Imaging, Computational Imaging, Biomedical Data Science, Spatial Data Science
• Deep Learning, Computer Vision, Emotion Recognition, Intelligent Systems, Image Processing, Signal Processing, and Classification Systems Using Machine Learning Models
• Next Generation Intelligent Transportation System, V2X, AI-assisted B5G/6G Communication and Networking, 3D-Networking, Zero Touch Network, Connected & Autonomous Vehicle, Edge AI
• Theoretical Computer Science: Algorithms and Complexity, Graph Algorithms, Graph Theory and Combinatorics
• Data Security and Privacy Using Advanced Cryptography
• Computer Vision

* BE/BTECH candidates are eligible for above areas.

Physical Sciences

Experimental Physics

• Super capacitors, Solid-state Lithium Batteries *
• Superconductivity, Quantum Materials
• Physics of Semiconductor Devices (solar cells, light emitting diodes, transistors, memory, bioelectronic) based on quantum/organic/perovskite/2D materials using various optical and electrical spectroscopy techniques
• Ultrafast Optical Spectroscopy of 2D Nano-materials
• Biomedical Instrumentation and Imaging, Development of Light Sheet Microscopy (LSM) or Selective Plane Illumination Microscopy (SPIM) imaging system; Development of photoacoustic imaging (PAI) system – both microscopy and tomography *
• Advanced Semiconductor Devices for Power / Energy Conversion *
• Semiconductor Devices for Sensors and Energy Harvesting *
• Quantum Materials (Topological Materials, and Van der Waals Heterostructures), Spintronics (Multiferroics) and Device Physics *
• Materials Engineering and Device Physics *
• Quantum Dot Spin-Qubits, 2D Superconducting Circuits *

BE/BTech candidates are eligible for selected areas marked with *

Theoretical Physics

• Condensed Matter Theory: Quantum Materials, Magnetism and Spintronics
• Beyond Standard Model of Particle Physics, Effective Field Theory, Baryon Number Violation, Dark Matter
• Quantum Information Theory, Quantum Materials (Theory) and Quantum-Limited Sensing and Metrology
• Theoretical Cosmology and Analysis of Cosmological and Astrophysical Datasets
• Beyond the Standard Model of Particle Physics, Collider Phenomenology
• Soft Matter, Complex Systems, Biophysics
• Gravitational Waves, Pulsars
• Soft Matter Physics, Biophysics, and Computational Modelling
• Stochastic Lattice Gas Models Far from Equilibrium

Earth, Environmental and Sustainability Sciences

• Atmospheric Optics *
• Atmospheric Aerosols *
• Reconstructing Holocene Sea Level *
• Stable Isotope Geochemistry *
• Atmospheric Dynamics *
• Tropical Meteorology & Monsoons *

CHPC Centre of High-Performance Computing

Research areas	Relevant Areas
Quantum information theory and quantum computing	MSc in Physics
Computational materials science	MSc in Physics/ Chemistry
Bioinformatics, NGS analysis	MSc in Bioinformatics/Computational Biology
Theoretical and Computational Chemical Physics and Softmatter biological physics	MSc in Chemistry/Physics/ Biophysics/Computational Biology; Experience in theoretical physical chemistry /soft matter physics/biophysics is preferred. Background and experience in numerical techniques and computations is a plus.
Bioinformatics, Computational Biology	MSc in Bioinformatics /Computational Biology
Atmospheric Modeling and Boundary Layer Dynamics	MSc/MTech in Atmospheric Science/ Meteorology/Climate Science/ Physics/ Mathematics/ Computer Science. BE/BTech (4 years) in Engineering
Computational Structural Biology and Bioinformatics	MSc/MS/MTech OR BE/BTech/Engineering degree (4 years) in Biological Sciences, Physical Sciences, Biophysics, Computer Science, Mathematics or Chemical Science etc. Including: Electronics & Communication (specializing in Image Processing), Engineering Physics Preferred electives: Drug Discovery, Bioinformatics, Big Data Analysis, Image Processing or relevant fields. Candidate should have a good aptitude to work on structure, function and mechanism of biological macromolecules (Proteins/Protein DNA/RNA/Drug complexes) and assemblies using biological data from single particle cryoEM and 3 dimensional image processing and/or Protein Crystallography, Protein structure based drug design including AI based methods and Big Data Analysis, Structural Bioinformatics. Candidates with Competence in using Linux environments and programming (such as C/C++/python etc.) will be preferred.
Numerical Analysis of Partial Differential Equations	MSc/MTech in Mathematics/Data Science with interest in Analysis, PDEs, Numerical methods or Scientific computing
Computational Fluid Dynamics, Numerical methods for PDEs, HPC for Computational Biology of the Heart.	MSc/MTech in Mathematics/Data Science/Biomedical engineering. Background in PDEs, Numerical methods, Scientific computing, and/or Computational biology is preferred.
Theoretical and Computational Biology: Tissue regeneration, Cell Polarity, Signal procesing	MSc/MTech in Physics or Mathematics or Computer Science BE/BTech (4 years) Physics or Mathematics or Computer Science

Application Procedure

• Applicants should complete the online application form at the url: ( https://admissions.iisertvm.ac.in/phd/index.php/applicant/register/19 ).
• Only applications complete in all respects would be considered. Do not forget to click the “Submit” button after completing your application.
• Applicants will also be prompted to upload all the supporting documents online.
• Applicants should provide Name/Affiliation/Contact number and Email addresses of two referees in the application form.
• On submission of the online application form, the applicants will receive an acknowledgement email with a unique application number.
• Applicants are NOT required to post a hard copy of the application to IISER TVM.
• In case of any application-related queries, please contact the Ph.D. coordinator by email at: phdprogramme@iisertvm.ac.in. Any other mode of communication will not be entertained.
• Mere fulfilment of the eligibility criteria does not entitle a candidate to be called for the interview.

Selection Process

Biological Sciences

It is mandatory for a candidate to submit a short “Statement of Purpose” of 300-400 words, based on a research area the candidate finds interesting. While applying online, the proposal has to be uploaded under the section “Statement of Purpose (SOP)”. The proposal need not be related to the research ongoing at the School of Biology, IISER TVM. Short-listed candidates will have to appear for interviews conducted by IISER TVM in hybrid mode. There will be two rounds of interviews. The first round of interviews will be conducted online. Candidates who are shortlisted further for the final round of interviews will have to appear in person at IISER TVM campus. The final selection of candidates will solely be based on the performance during the interviews.

Chemical Sciences

Marks and Ranks (CSIR-JRF/UGC-JRF/GATE) based shortlisting and interview in person.

Physical Sciences

During the application process, the candidates will be asked to enter one of the choices among 1) Theoretical, 2) Experimental. The shortlisted applicants will be invited to attend interviews conducted in hybrid mode.

Data Sciences

During the application process, a candidate will be asked to select one or more choices of the research areas for the School of Data Science based on her/his qualifications. The shortlisted applicants will be invited to attend interviews which will be conducted in online mode at IISER TVM.

Earth, Environmental and Sustainability Sciences

Applications will be shortlisted based on marks and the shortlisted applicants will be invited to attend interviews which will be conducted in hybrid mode at IISER TVM.

CHPC

During the application process, a candidate will be asked to select one or more choices of the research area for the centre based on her/his qualification. The shortlisted applicants will be invited to attend inter-views which will be conducted in hybrid mode at IISER TVM.

• Online application portal opened from: 17 October, 2025
• Last date for receipt of online applications: 8 November, 2025

Tentative Interview Dates

• Biological Sciences: First round (online): 1st week of November, 2025; Final round (in-person): 3rd-4th week of November, 2025
• Chemical Sciences: 4 December, 2025 to 5 December, 2025
• Physical Sciences: 28 November, 2025
• Data Sciences: 1st week of December, 2025
• EESS: 4 December, 2025 to 5 December, 2025
• CHPC: 27 November, 2025 to 28 November, 2025
• Mode of examination: See the Schoolwise selection procedure

• Notification
• Application Form
• IISER TVM Website