IIT Guwahati Students Win DAAD KOSPIE Scholarship for Research Stint in Germany

Two M.Tech students from IIT Guwahati are headed to Germany this year to conduct thesis research at two of the country's top technical universities.

Published 10 June 2026 | Category Awards | Office Dean of Academics

Swetha Gowdaman and Jonakdeep Saharia have been named recipients of the DAAD KOSPIE Scholarship for 2026–27.

KOSPIE (Combined Study and Practice Stays for Engineers from Developing Countries) is an initiative of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) that funds engineering students from select developing and newly industrialised countries to complete thesis research in Germany. The India track is offered exclusively to MTech scholars from the IITs, with a minimum CGPA of 8.5.

The awards were presented in the presence of DAAD India representatives, delegates from German institutions, and fellow KOSPIE scholars from across the country.

Swetha Gowdaman studies at the Jyoti and Bhupat Mehta School of Health Sciences and Technology (JBMSHT), IIT Guwahati. As part of the fully funded programme, she will spend seven months at RWTH Aachen University conducting her MTech thesis research. At RWTH Aachen, Swetha will work under Prof. Vivek Pachauri, with continued guidance from her IIT Guwahati co-supervisors, Dr. Erwin Fuhrer and Dr. Rajiv K. Kar. Her research centers on upgrading and validating a precision multi-channel readout system to study the interfacial physics of graphene-based liquid-gated field-effect transistors (GFETs) for biosensing applications.

Jonakdeep Saharia is a second-year MTech student in the Department of Civil Engineering, IIT Guwahati, specialising in Water Resources Engineering and Management. Under the fellowship, he will spend seven months, from September 2026 to March 2027, at the University of Stuttgart.

Jonakdeep's project is jointly supervised by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Silke Wieprecht and Dr. Sebastian Schwindt from the University of Stuttgart, and Prof. Arup Kumar Sarma from the Department of Civil Engineering, IIT Guwahati.

Jonakdeep's research, titled "Improving 3D Hydrodynamic Modelling with Surrogate-Assisted Bayesian Parameter Calibration for Enhanced Flood Hazard Assessment," investigates the role of turbulence in flood dynamics and employs surrogate-assisted Bayesian parameter calibration to optimize key turbulence model parameters, with the aim of improving flood hazard assessment and supporting more reliable flood risk management and river basin planning.

RWTH Aachen and the University of Stuttgart are both members of TU9, the alliance of Germany's leading universities of technology. TU9 institutions collectively receive over a fifth of all German Research Foundation (DFG) grants and nearly half of DFG's engineering funding, and five of the alliance's nine members carry Germany's "University of Excellence" distinction. KOSPIE scholars are placed exclusively at TU9 universities.

The scholarships reflect DAAD's broader goal of building international academic ties between Germany and countries like India, giving young engineers hands-on research experience abroad while strengthening long-term scientific collaboration between institutions on both sides.