PC: University of Zurich, Frank Brüderli

ThinkSwiss Research
Scholarships: Asia-Pacific

Call for applications for the ThinkSwiss Scholarships is now closed. Congratulations to all the awardees of the 2024 cohort!

ThinkSwiss Research Scholarships offers students from India, Singapore and Australia fully-funded research stints in a Swiss laboratory of your choosing. The duration of the scholarship is for a minimum of two months and up to three months. This provides scholars with an opportunity to experience the Swiss research ecosystem first-hand.

2024 Awardees

  • Anamika Revathy Nair at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras will be working on ‘Switzerland at the United Nations Security Council: Academic Insights’ at the The Graduate Institute Geneva (IHEID)
  • Anamika Gangadharan at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras will be working on ‘Sustainable Integrated Districts for High Density, High Liveability Cities: A Cross-country Study of the Role of Governance, Planning and Urban Design in Building Future-Ready Cities’ at ETH Zurich
  • Anirudh Chouhan at the Indian Institute of Technology (BHU) Varanasi will be working on ‘Parametric Analysis of Embodied Carbon of Irregular High-Rise Buildings’ at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne
  • Anjana Madhav at the Central University of Rajasthan will be working on ‘Consequences of Land Restoration on Wildlife and its Population’ at ETH Zurich
  • Deepjoy Rudra Sarma at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur will be working on ‘In-Silico Study of the Binding of Quinolone Moieties to DNA Gyrase’ at the University of Geneva
  • Dhanush Sudhakar at the National Institute of Technology (NIT) Tiruchirappalli will be working on ‘Design and Control of Miniature Continuum Robots for Neurosurgery’ at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne
  • Disha Jain at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur will be working on ‘Decoupling of Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Economic Growth by Sector and Substance’ at the University of Basel
  • Ishita Khatri at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras will be working on ‘AI-Driven Documentation of Domain Specialist Knowledge in Build Heritage‘ at ETH Zurich
  • Kavya Pramod at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Thiruvananthapuram will be working on ‘Synthesis of Novel Fluorine-Free Amphiphobic Polymers for Coating Applications’ at the University of Applied Sciences and Art Northwestern Switzerland
  • Kingshuk Pal at Presidency University Kolkata will be working on ‘Anorthite as Feedstock for Carbon Mineralisation: Investigating Carbon Capture and Storage Capacity with Silicon Isotope Tracing’ at the University of Bern
  • Lakshini Kannan at Bharathidasan University will be working on ‘Spatial and Functional Characterisation of Neuronal Lipids’ at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne
  • Ridha Shemil at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras will be working on ‘The Future of Humanitarian Design’ at the The Graduate Institute Geneva (IHEID)
  • Roshin Nazeer at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Thiruvananthapuram will be working on ‘Growth Competition Between Multi-Drug Resistant Bacteria and Bacterial Members of a Mixed Bacterial Community: Generation and Use of Fluorescent Bacterial Clones’ at the University of Zurich
  • Sairaj Loke at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Indore will be working on ‘Visual Estimation of Tree Canopy Rigidity‘ at ETH Zurich
  • Sakthi Jaya Sundar Rajasekar at the Tamil Nadu Dr. M.G.R. Medical University will be working on ‘Analysing Single-Bacterium Nanomotion Dynamics to Investigate Antimicrobial Susceptibility with Artificial Intelligence Technology’ at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne
  • Souvik Mandal at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) will be working on ‘Predictive Lifespan Assessment of C. Elegans Individuals by Live Imaging and Machine Learning’ at the University of Bern
  • Suhani Jain at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati will be working on ‘Outbreak Analysis of Vancomycin-Resistant Enterococcus’ at the ZHAW Institute for Computational Life Sciences
  • Tosmi Goel at the Indira Gandhi Delhi Technical University for Women will be working on ‘Fabrication and Testing of Graphene Oxide Hydrogels for Intervertebral Disc Regeneration’ at the University of Bern
  • Vishal Soni at the Indian Institute of Information Technology Bhagalpur will be working on ‘From Text to Touch: Empowering Robots with Interpretable LLMs for Enhancing Robotic Manipulation Tasks’ at the Swiss AI Lab IDSIA (Istituto Dalle Molle di studi sull’intelligenza artificiale)

Who Can Apply?

  • Applicants enrolled at an accredited Indian, Australian or Singaporean university or research institute.
  • Applicants currently enrolled in a Master’s programme or have completed their second year of undergraduate degree by the time the research stay in Switzerland begins.
  • Applicants with written confirmation from a professor at a Swiss university or research institute that they have accepted you for a research stay in their group/lab.
  • Doctoral and postdoctoral candidates are not eligible to apply.
  • We specifically encourage Indian applicants with an interest in Antimicrobial Research (AMR), One Health, biodiversity or climate change and action to apply. (The University of Lausanne is not part of this programme for Indian students.) We are subject-agnostic as far as Australian and Singaporean applicants are concerned.

Not Sure Where To Begin? Let Us Help You.

  • Think about the field in which you wish to deepen your research and look for prospective supervising professors who work in that field.
  • Write to them and enquire if they’d be interested in taking you on in their cohort. It can take several weeks to find your host professor, so we recommend starting as early as possible and writing to as many relevant professors as possible.
  • Ideally, your email to them should include:
    • Details about why you would like to work with a particular professor and what about their work interests you.
    • Details about your skills and competencies that are relevant to the work in the chosen field.
    • Details about your past experiences and how they are relevant to your current research interest.
    • Details about how you plan to contribute to and elevate their research.
    • Details about why you would make a good fit.
    • Your CV and a proposal/short summary of the research you would like to undertake under their supervision.
    • Applicants are responsible for finding a host professor at a Swiss university as well as for clarifying the scope of a research project before submitting their applications for the ThinkSwiss Scholarships.
    • If you are struggling to identify appropriate professors, reach out to faculty at the university you are currently enrolled in and enquire if they know of suitable professors you could work with. Where possible, request your faculty members to introduce and recommend you to prospective professors.

You may also refer to this video. Get an overview of Swiss universities and research institutions.

Our FAQs are here should you have any other questions.

Source: University of Fribourg

Hear It From Those Who've Done It

    The risk group at UNIL specializes in the study of natural hazards and risks induced by surface and atmospheric phenomena, and their perception and impact on society. The ThinkSwiss scholarship gave me the opportunity to be on the ground and experience the very wide range of remote sensing techniques to study instabilities, at different scales, from satellite data to geological fieldwork acquisitions, and try to improve the processing and the analysis.

    Mansi Singh IIT Roorkee / University of Lausanne

    ThinkSwiss helped me fund my research internship in Switzerland. Although my research was in geomatics and the environment, I worked on completely interdisciplinary approaches in the Remote Sensing Laboratory, as a part of the research project exploring ways of closing the yield gap in African smallholder agriculture and requiring adaptation of feasible cultivation practices. Understanding loopholes and exchanging ideas to improve my design and configuration made it a great learning environment, broadening my perspective on my next steps.

    Adyasha Mohapatra IIT BHU / University of Zurich

    Switzerland is full of great hikes, mountains, lakes and medieval history. I have never visited such a scenic country that is so close to nature. The amount of research that happens in Switzerland in the field of Computer Science is unparalleled to any other country. Switzerland is definitely the place for research and higher studies.

    Vibhav Agarwal IIIT Bangalore / Research Intern – University of Fribourg

    Geneva has a great natural environment conducive to research in the social sciences as it hosts several international organisations including blocks from the United Nations Office at Geneva, International Labour Organization, World Trade Organization, World Health Organization, the International Committee of the Red Cross, World Intellectual Property Organization, etc. Thanks to ThinkSwiss, this was my first venture abroad and I am really motivated to pursue research in Human Rights after this for further studies.

    Avantika Singh IIT Madras / Research Intern – The Graduate Institute of Geneva

    Right from my very first day, I was very impressed by the level of organisation in the group. Each individual project in the lab was somehow contorted to fit the larger vision of the team. I highly recommend Switzerland, in particular for biomedical research, from my experience.

    Sharika Mahadevan IIT Madras / University of Bern

Contact

    Prajwala Ravikrishna, Academic Engagement Coordinator, Swissnex in India

    Students from India, for more information about the ThinkSwiss Research Scholarships kindly write to Prajwala. Selected candidates will be notified by email only. Kindly note that telephonic queries will not be encouraged.

    Joël Henri Brunner, Science Counselor - Embassy of Switzerland in Singapore

    Students from Singapore, for more information about the ThinkSwiss Research Scholarships kindly write to Joël. Selected candidates will be notified by email only.

    Tristan Piguet, Science Counselor - Embassy of Switzerland in Australia

    Students from Australia, for more information about the ThinkSwiss Research Scholarships, kindly write to the Embassy of Switzerland in Australia. Selected candidates will be notified by email only.
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