DAAD Research Fellowship in Germany Opens, Pays €2,800 a Month for AI PhDs

DAAD, Germany’s academic exchange body, opened the Heilbronn AI Fellowship on August 30, 2026, inviting international PhD candidates and postdoctoral researchers in Artificial Intelligence to apply for funded research stays at institutions on Heilbronn’s Bildungscampus. Unlike most DAAD programs, this one has no fixed application window. It runs on a rolling basis year-round.
Source: DAAD Scholarship Database

DAAD Research Fellowship in Germany: Specifics

• Stipend: €2,800 per month (Rs.3,08,224)
  Exchange rate used: Rs.110.08 per EUR as of September 2026. Verify the current rate before finalizing your budget.
• Duration: 1 to 12 months, non-extendable, with exceptions considered only in special circumstances
• Fields covered: Artificial Intelligence and closely related disciplines, including machine learning, robotics, data science, computational intelligence, and human-centered AI
• Host institutions: DHBW Center for Advanced Studies, DHBW Heilbronn, Ferdinand-Steinbeis-Institute, Fraunhofer HNFIZ, Heilbronn University of Applied Sciences (HHN), and TUM Campus Heilbronn, all located on the Bildungscampus Heilbronn
• Extras: payments toward health, accident, and personal liability insurance; a lump-sum contribution toward international travel costs; additional family benefits for stays longer than six months; and extra support for applicants with disabilities or chronic illness
  Source: DAAD Scholarship Database

Who qualifies: PhD candidates must be in their final year before their dissertation defense; postdocs must have completed their doctorate within the last five years. Applicants also need a confirmed affiliation with a university or research institution and must have been living outside Germany for the full 15 months immediately before applying, so anyone already based in Germany on a different fellowship or job doesn’t qualify. Selection runs as a single-stage evaluation by independent DAAD-appointed experts, weighing academic performance, the strength of the proposed research project, and how well the applicant’s goals align with Heilbronn’s AI research focus.

Why it matters for Indian students: This pays meaningfully more than DAAD’s standard doctoral research grant, which now sits at €1,400 a month (Rs.1,54,112) after a rate increase earlier in 2026.

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Exchange rate used: Rs.110.08 per EUR as of September 2026. Verify the current rate before finalizing your budget.

But the two aren't interchangeable. The standard DAAD grant funds a full multi-year doctorate; the Heilbronn AI Fellowship funds a short, focused research stay of up to a year, layered on top of a PhD or postdoc you're already pursuing elsewhere. For an Indian student in the final year of an AI-related PhD or a postdoc within five years of finishing one, this is a way to add a funded stint at a German research institution to your CV without applying for a full program, relocating long-term, or going through Germany's usual APS-heavy doctoral visa process from scratch. 

It's also worth knowing where the fellowship sits relative to Germany's salaried PhD route: many Indian doctoral researchers in Germany are actually on TV-L E13 employment contracts rather than stipends, which pay more overall and come with full social security and pension contributions, but require a formal university employment contract rather than a fellowship. The Heilbronn Fellowship doesn't replace that path. It's a shorter, stipend-based add-on for researchers whose base funding or position is already elsewhere. 

For the full comparison between stipends and salaried PhD tracks in Germany, see our PhD stipend guide, and for the broader scholarship landscape, our PhD scholarships in Germany guide.

What to do now: There's no deadline, but DAAD recommends applying at least four months before your intended start date to allow time for review. Before you apply, you'll need to identify which of the six eligible Heilbronn host institutions fits your research area and get a host contact there to jointly prepare the application with you. Applications go through the DAAD portal and typically require an online application form, a full CV in tabular form (maximum 3 pages), and a list of publications (maximum 10 pages) if you have one. You can only have one Heilbronn AI Fellowship application in process at a time; submitting a second while the first is pending won't be considered.
Source: DAAD Scholarship Database

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