Organisation: Lifeline Foundation (www.emsindia.in)

Designation: Research Fellow

Location: Vadodara, Gujarat (work from office + occasional travel across India)

Nature of Association: Full-time Fellowship, 12 months, renewable subject to review

Salary: ₹60,000 per month, consolidated (no HRA on top; professional tax deducted at source). Publication charges, conference travel and registration, and field travel are paid separately by the Foundation.

About Lifeline Foundation and CIPHERS

Lifeline Foundation launched India's first highway accident helpline in 2002. Since then, our work has expanded to encompass emergency medical services, road safety, highway trauma care, pre-hospital care, and ambulance services. We helped birth India's 108 service and authored Gujarat's EMS Act, the country's first such legislation.

Our work has been recognised with a Padma Shri and documented as a case study at Harvard and TISS. Today, we work across states and borders: serving industries, ports, mines, airstrips, and oil rigs. As a DISH-recognised centre and an American Heart Association training centre, we train doctors across systems, including AYUSH, paramedics, industrial staff, and bystanders in first aid, CPR, and trauma care.

We run a Medical Appliances Bank and host conferences on road safety and emergency care. We operate lean but deliver at scale. If meaningful work and real growth matter to you, you'll find both here.

This Fellowship is offered through CIPHERS: Centre for Implementation, Public Health, Emergency care & Road Safety Research, our research unit, which turns this field experience and policy work into published research. Life Matters to Us.

About the Fellowship The Kokilaben Fellowship is a dedicated fellowship on the climate, disaster and emergency health nexus. It is named in memory of Smt Kokilaben and made possible by the support of her family. One fellow is appointed at a time, full time and office-based in Vadodara, for twelve months, renewable once.

India plans for disasters but rarely measures what they do to health access. When a flood, cyclone or heatwave strikes, how long does it take a sick or injured person to reach care, who does not reach it at all, and which preparations made the difference? The Fellowship exists to produce published, citable Indian evidence on these questions.

The fellow works as a Researcher within CIPHERS, mentored by Dr Subroto Das, Padma Shri (institutional mentor) and Dr Shukanto Das, University of Edinburgh (research mentor).

The fellow chooses the question and the method.

The Foundation can support work across the range: secondary analysis of national disaster and health datasets (NDMA, SDMA, IMD, HMIS, NFHS); GIS analysis of hazard zones against hospital and ambulance reach; policy analysis of disaster management plans,



heat action plans and EMS law; systematic reviews; cost analysis; small field studies with ethics review through our university MoUs; and the design, piloting and evaluation of a programme or training intervention, for example disaster first-aid training for a flood-prone community or an industrial site, so that a tested intervention is itself a product of the year. One live option is to take forward a phase of CIPHERS' design for an incident-based surveillance repository that links climate events to the health facilities they disrupt and the emergencies that follow.

The one fixed constraint is time: the study must be designed, completed and submitted for publication within twelve months, which favours questions that build on data, programmes and access the Foundation already has. A mixed-methods background, combining numbers with interviews and observation, suits the work best.

Key Responsibilities

Research

- Design and deliver at least one study a year within the priority areas: health access during climate disasters; EMS and pre-hospital care under disaster conditions; hospital and health facility readiness; community and bystander first response; cascading industrial (natech) emergencies and hazmat response; heat and health; disaster health law and governance; medical equipment and supply in disasters; economic burden of disaster-related injury
- Where the study takes that form, design, pilot and evaluate a programme or training intervention with the Foundation's team, so that it can be adopted and scaled after the fellowship
- Agree the research plan and protocol with both mentors within the first two months
- Submit at least one manuscript a year to a peer-reviewed journal as first or major contributing author
- Leave cleaned datasets, hazard and facility maps, protocols, search strategies and analysis code with the Foundation for the next fellow

Dissemination

- Write at least three to four policy briefs a year, published online and timed where possible to the monsoon, cyclone and heat seasons, with at least one placed in the print media
- Submit at least one conference abstract and present a poster or paper at a national or international conference each year
- Organise and deliver the annual Smt Kokilaben Lecture (online, December), including presenting the year's findings

Programme Engagement

- Take part in the Foundation's EMS, first-responder and industrial emergency training programmes: site visits, monitoring data, evaluation design and reporting
- Contribute evidence to disaster first-aid, heat illness and industrial emergency training modules




- Support the Medical Appliances Bank in planning what equipment a disaster response needs and where it should be held
- Where the mentors agree, support partner ambulance services, district disaster authorities, industrial safety teams and NGOs to write up their field experience for publication

Reporting

- Prepare an annual technical report on the year's work for the Foundation and the funder
- Present progress to the Fellowship Committee at its reviews

Who Should Apply

Education & Experience

- PhD in a relevant discipline is necessary and preferred (completed, or thesis submitted with viva scheduled). Candidates with a Master's degree and at least 3 years of full-time research or programme evaluation experience are also eligible. Relevant disciplines include disaster management and risk reduction; public health and epidemiology; climate science and environmental health; emergency medicine, nursing and paramedicine; geography and GIS; civil and environmental engineering; economics, public policy and law; statistics and data science.
- A background in disaster preparedness, disaster management, climate and health, or emergency care, through study, research or field work, is required
- At least one peer-reviewed publication as first author or major contributor, or a manuscript accepted for publication
- Hands-on experience with quantitative and qualitative methods and their software (for example, R, Stata, SPSS, NVivo, QGIS). Mixed-methods experience is preferred.
- Experience with systematic reviews, GIS analysis or grant writing is a plus

Skills Required

- Strong written and spoken English; able to write for journals, policy briefs and the press
- Able to take a study from design to submission within twelve months, working independently with weekly supervision
- Comfortable presenting at conferences and organising an online public event
- Proficient in MS Office and reference management software
- Trained in, or comfortable using, AI tools for research: literature search and screening, coding and analysis, and drafting support, with the judgement to check what they produce

What We Value

- Ability to work independently, or semi-independently with weekly supervision, and to keep a study moving without being chased
- Curiosity and rigour in methodology
- Ability to work with ambiguity and incomplete data
- Honesty in reporting findings, even when inconvenient
- Willingness to engage with field programmes and partner organisations, not only desk work

How to Apply

Send a CV, a cover letter, one sample of published or accepted work, and a two-page note on the research question you would propose to answer in the fellowship year, to [email protected], copying [email protected], with the position title in the subject line.

Shortlisted candidates will be interviewed by the Fellowship Committee. The research plan is finalised with the mentors in the first two months after joining.

📌 Research Fellow (Vadodara)
🏢 Lifeline Foundation
📍 Vadodara