IIT Kharagpur JRF 2026: Up to Rs 37,000, Apply by 3 November

IIT Kharagpur's Department of Aerospace Engineering is hiring six Junior Research Fellows for a DRDO-sponsored project on rotating detonation engines (RDEs). The IIT Kharagpur JRF pays up to Rs 37,000 a month for up to 36 months, and online applications close on 3 November 2026. The notice includes one condition in capital letters: apply only if you have real, hands-on work in at least one of seven technical areas.

If you're following other openings on this campus, our IIT Kharagpur internships hub collects them in one place. Because the money comes from ARDB under DRDO, the DRDO internships guide is worth a look for related lab fellowships.

What the IIT Kharagpur RDE project works on

A rotating detonation engine burns fuel through detonation waves that travel around an annular chamber, and this project (phase 1) is about building a testing facility for such engines, with real-time control of flow and thrust. The six fellows will work on detonation-based combustion, high-speed reacting flows, combustion instability and supersonic mixing. The work also covers turbomachinery built for RDEs, turbine integration, exhaust-flow characterisation, experimental diagnostics, and data-driven modelling and control.

Since the project centres on a test facility, expect a lot of lab and rig work alongside simulation. That matches the way the notice weighs practical experience over coursework.

IIT Kharagpur JRF eligibility

The essential qualification is a Post Graduate Degree in Basic Science OR a Graduate / Post Graduate Degree in a Professional Course. On top of the degree, you must have been selected through one of these routes:

• A National Eligibility Test: CSIR-UGC NET (including lectureship / Assistant Professorship) or GATE.
• A national-level examination run by Central Government departments, their agencies or institutions, such as DST, DBT, DAE, DOS, DRDO, MoE, ICAR, ICMR, IIT, IISc, IISER or NISER.

The age limit is 35 years, counted as on the last date of the advertisement. It is relaxable by up to 5 years for SC, ST, OBC, physically handicapped, visually handicapped and female applicants, and the notice adds that age rules may also be relaxed under the sponsor agency's rules. If GATE is your planned route and you're still preparing, see our note on GATE 2027 registration.

The seven skill areas for this IIT Kharagpur fellowship

You need demonstrable hands-on experience in at least one of these areas. Each one stands alone, so you don't have to cover all seven.

1. Computational fluid dynamics: ANSYS Fluent, OpenFOAM or similar tools; RANS and URANS runs; reacting flows in combustors and aero-engines, or non-reacting flows in compressors, turbines and nozzles.
2. Experimental research and propulsion testing: combustor design, compressed-gas systems, supersonic wind tunnels, schlieren, shadowgraphy and chemiluminescence imaging, plus pressure, temperature and heat-release measurement.
3. Instrumentation and data acquisition: LabVIEW, NI FlexLogger, CompactDAQ and CompactRIO, dynamic pressure transducers and signal conditioning, syncing high-speed cameras with ignition and lasers, grounding and EMI shielding, Arduino and microcontrollers.
4. Control systems and system identification: dynamic modelling, PID design, FPGA and real-time control, hardware-in-the-loop testing, closed-loop control of rigs or combustors, autopilot programming.
5. Artificial intelligence and machine learning: deep-learning pipelines for physical systems, building training data from simulations or experiments, transformers and transfer learning, predicting instabilities or shock motion.
6. Signal processing and data analysis: FFT, power spectral density, spectrograms, wavelets, recurrence plots, Nyquist sampling and aliasing, and analysis of pressure signals together with high-speed images.
7. Applied physics, plasma and advanced diagnostics: spark and plasma-assisted ignition, laser diagnostics, optical system design, combustion spectroscopy, thermoacoustics, and magnetohydrodynamics.

The list reaches well beyond classic aerospace work. Someone whose strength is ML on time-series data, or embedded control, has a legitimate qualifying area here. The notice singles out experience tied directly to RDEs, detonation combustion, combustion instability and advanced diagnostics as the most valuable.

How to show hands-on experience in your JRF application

The instructions ask you to name the area or areas you're applying under and back each one with specific evidence. Acceptable proof includes research projects, dissertations or publications, CFD simulations you ran and validated, and experimental facilities you designed or operated. Instrumentation or control systems you built count too, as do imaging, laser or signal-processing methods you implemented, and code or AI/ML pipelines applied to physical systems.

Keep theory and practice apart in your write-up. The notice says plainly that listing a software package, language or instrument without showing how you used it won't be enough. Also note that meeting the minimum qualification does not guarantee an interview call, so a vague application is likely to be filtered out. For more fellowships with similar requirements, browse all opportunities on Talentd.

Stipend, tenure and application fee

The consolidated pay is up to Rs 37,000 a month, with the exact figure depending on your qualification and experience. The position runs for 36 months or until the project ends, whichever comes first. The application fee is Rs 0 for General, OBC, female and SC/ST candidates. The advertisement still prints SBI account details for IIT SRIC and says transaction details go in the form, so check how the online form handles that field when the fee is zero.

How to apply for the IIT Kharagpur JRF

1. Download Advertisement and Application Form and read the full list of skill areas before deciding to apply.
2. Pick the area or areas where you have practical work, and gather the evidence: project reports, thesis chapters, publications, simulation results, photos or descriptions of rigs and systems you built, or links to code.
3. Open the official SRIC application page for advertisement IIT/SRIC/R/FAT/2026/101 and register or log in.
4. Fill in your degree details and the exam through which you qualify (GATE, CSIR-UGC NET or a recognised national-level test).
5. Write the experience section area by area, stating what you did yourself and what tools you used for it, kept separate from topics you only know in theory.
6. Complete the fee section (the fee is Rs 0 for every category) and submit the form online.

The deadline is 3 November 2026, three weeks after the notice went up on 13 October.