IIT Madras has partnered with SRIHER in Chennai to introduce an MD-PhD Dual Degree program through a Memorandum of Understanding.

SRIHER will grant a postgraduate medical degree, and IIT Madras's Department of Medical Sciences and Technology will award a PhD degree. This partnership will focus on core clinical, interdisciplinary, and translational research with the help of experts.

The MD-PhD dual degree program aims to train research scientists to lead India's pursuit of self-sufficiency in medicine and health. The program will start in the upcoming academic year.

Postgraduate students admitted to SRIHER through NEET and desirous of doing PhD will apply for the Ph.D. program at the end of the second year at the Department of Medical Sciences and Technology at IIT Madras. The Department of Medical Sciences and Technology will follow established procedures to select candidates to pursue the Ph.D. program.

“The MD-PhD graduates, who are known as ‘Physician-Scientists,’ are very few. However, a remarkable 37 percent of the Nobel Prizes in Physiology have been awarded to them. Physician-Scientists establish cause-and-effect relationships such as smoking and cancer and sugar and diabetes,” the official release stated.