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Experience with international postdoctoral fellowships.NPDF, Humboldt, Marie Curie (51)

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Growing 70 pts 0 followers
PES University · Posted
Cybersecurity Pharmaceutical Sciences

I just finished my PhD defense last week (Computer Science, IIT Madras) and wanted to share some honest reflections while everything is still fresh.

What went well:

  • My advisor was supportive and gave me genuine intellectual freedom
  • The collaborative atmosphere in the lab made the isolation of research more bearable
  • The depth of knowledge I built in my area is something I am genuinely proud of

What was hard:

  • Years 2–3 were brutal. Two major paper rejections triggered serious self-doubt.
  • The PMRF stipend still does not cover Bangalore costs comfortably
  • The academic job market is brutal.I applied to 22 positions and got 3 interviews

Where I am now: Joining a research lab at Microsoft India. Not the faculty position I originally wanted, but I am honestly excited.

Happy to answer questions from PhD students or people considering the PhD path in India.

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6 Replies

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Karthik Rajan Growing 180 pts · Accepted answer

Overleaf + GitHub integration is underrated. You get version control and collaboration in one place.

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Uday Bose Starting 5 pts · Accepted answer

If you are not already using a reading group format with your students, I would strongly recommend it. Forces everyone to articulate what they read.

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Jagdish Rawat · Accepted answer

Respectfully, I think this framing misses the systemic dimension. Individual researchers cannot solve a collective action problem. If you submit to open-access journals and your colleague submits to Nature, your colleague gets the promotion. Until evaluation criteria change at the institutional level.which requires policy intervention.individual choices have minimal impact.

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Replying to Jagdish Rawat
Divya Krishnan Growing 85 pts · Accepted answer

The Fulbright SoP is very different from a typical PhD SoP. It needs to focus on cultural exchange and diplomacy, not just research.

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Replying to Jagdish Rawat
Quamar Ahmed Growing 65 pts · Accepted answer

Thank you! The reference to MuRIL is particularly useful.I had not considered it as an alternative to XLM-R for Indic languages.

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Replying to Jagdish Rawat
Revathi Chandrasekaran Active 410 pts · Accepted answer

This is really helpful context. One more question: for the ethics committee approval, does the institution where the data is collected or the institution where the analysis is performed need to be the primary ethics approver?