IIT Delhi DST Climate Modeling Project Recruitment 2026: JRF & Project Scientist Walk-in

IIT Delhi is hiring for a DST-funded climate research project, and unlike most of the recruitment drives on this site, there’s no online application form to fill in at all — you simply turn up in person, documents in hand, on 19 August 2026. It’s a walk-in test and interview combined into a single sitting, for just three posts under a Department of Science & Technology Centre of Excellence studying how climate models translate into usable climate information. If you’re a science postgraduate or an engineering graduate with the right qualifications and you can be in Hauz Khas, New Delhi that morning, this is worth a closer look.

The posts are attached to the DST Centre of Excellence in Climate Modeling at IIT Delhi, working under the theme “From Climate Modeling To Climate Information” (Project No. RP04757GC), housed in the Centre for Atmospheric Sciences. The project is led by Prof. Saroj Kanta Mishra and runs until 27 August 2029, though your own appointment — if selected — is contractual, paid on a consolidated basis, and renewed year to year (or ends with the project, whichever comes first). This isn’t a permanent government post; think of it as project-linked research employment with a defined end date tied to the DST grant.

Only two distinct post types are on offer here, so let’s go through each one individually rather than lumping them into one table — the eligibility bar is genuinely different between the two.

Junior Research Fellow (1 post): You qualify here in one of three ways — a Post Graduate degree in a basic science subject along with a valid NET qualification; OR a Graduate degree in a professional course (like engineering) along with NET; OR a Post Graduate degree with a professional qualification. In plain terms, the Bank — sorry, the Institute — is flexible about your exact academic path as long as you can show either postgraduate-level science training or a professional degree, backed by NET where required. This is the entry-level research post of the two, paying a consolidated ₹37,000 a month plus 27% House Rent Allowance on top.

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Project Scientist (2 posts): This one sits a notch higher, both in seniority and pay. You need a B.Tech, M.Sc, or MCA followed by a Post Graduate degree in a relevant discipline, and that postgraduate degree needs to carry a first-class or equivalent grade — a bare pass won’t clear the bar here. The pay itself is structured as a progressive scale rather than a flat figure, moving upward through the band as you continue on the project, starting broadly in the ₹38,000s and rising toward ₹50,000 a month with continued service.

Climate modeling and climate information sound like the same thing, but the Centre’s title deliberately separates them, and it’s worth understanding why if you’re thinking of applying. A climate model is the raw scientific engine — the equations and simulations that predict how the atmosphere, oceans and land surface will behave. Climate information is what you get after that raw output is translated into something a farmer, a city planner, or a disaster-management office can actually use — a rainfall forecast for a district, a heat-wave warning threshold, a drought risk index. This Centre of Excellence, backed by the Department of Science & Technology and running out of IIT Delhi’s Centre for Atmospheric Sciences, exists specifically to build that bridge. If you’re a science postgraduate who wants research experience that eventually touches real-world policy and disaster planning rather than staying purely theoretical, this is the kind of project where that happens.

For an engineering or MCA graduate eyeing the Project Scientist post, the appeal is a little different: climate science increasingly leans on the same computational and data-processing skills used elsewhere in tech — large simulation datasets, numerical modeling pipelines, and the software engineering needed to make those pipelines run reliably at scale. A first-class postgraduate qualification alongside a technical undergraduate degree signals exactly that blend of domain depth and computational competence the project is likely looking for.

Because this is a walk-in and not an online process, the entire evaluation happens in one sitting, which makes document preparation more important here than in a multi-stage online recruitment. Missing even one item can mean you don’t get interviewed at all, so treat this checklist as non-negotiable:

Since the notice explicitly states that percentage of marks must be indicated for every examination passed — not just your highest qualification — it’s worth tabulating your entire academic record (10th, 12th, graduation, and postgraduate marks) before you sit down to fill the form, so you’re not calculating percentages on the spot.

There’s no formal vacancy-wise reservation table in this notice — it’s a small, project-specific walk-in rather than a large public-sector drive — but SC/ST candidates do get a concession worth knowing about: a 5% relaxation in the qualifying marks is available to Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe candidates against the minimum eligibility criteria listed above. If you’re a retired or superannuated government employee and you do get selected, your consolidated pay will be fixed according to IIT Delhi’s prevailing norms for re-employed retirees, rather than the standard fresher scale.

One clause in the notice is easy to miss but matters if it applies to you: if you’re already employed at IIT Delhi or at IRD (the Industrial Research & Development unit), you will not be interviewed at all unless your application has been formally forwarded through your own department or section. Don’t just walk in assuming your existing IIT Delhi employment gets you a free pass — route your application through your establishment first.

Since this process skips a written exam entirely, the interview itself carries the full weight of the selection decision — there’s no separate score to fall back on if the conversation doesn’t go well. It’s worth being ready to explain, in plain terms, your dissertation or project work, any prior exposure to numerical modeling, statistics, or data analysis, and why you’re specifically interested in climate research rather than research in general. Committee interviews at IIT departments typically probe both subject fundamentals and your hands-on familiarity with tools relevant to the role — for a climate modeling project, that could mean anything from basic programming and data-handling skills to prior coursework in atmospheric science, depending on which of the two posts you’re applying for.