Frequently Asked Questions

Know Your Faculty (KYF) is a networking app built specifically for professors and researchers to find collaborators by real research fit — co-authors, grant partners, guest lecturers, and reviewers — instead of job titles or mutual connections. You discover verified professors through a swipe-based interface, see a live Collab Score showing how closely your research interests overlap, and connect once interest is mutual.

KYF is built for active academics — professors, associate and assistant professors, research fellows, and adjunct faculty — at universities and research institutions worldwide. It isn't a general professional network; every core feature is designed around academic collaboration specifically.

LinkedIn is built for job titles and career moves, and ResearchGate is built around publication metrics. KYF is built around research fit: it matches you to other professors based on shared categories, interests, and what you're actively seeking — a co-author, a grant partner, a guest lecture — not your job history or citation count.

Yes. Creating a profile, discovering and matching with other professors, messaging, and posting to the Opportunities board are all free, with no subscription required. A small set of optional paid boosts, like Priority Connect, exist for professors who want extra visibility or speed, but they're never required to use the core platform.

Know Your Faculty is open to professors at universities and research institutions worldwide. There's no country or institution restriction — the only requirement is that you're an active academic and can verify your identity.

Download the app, then sign up with your name, university, department, research category, and an email address. You'll pick a username and password, and can immediately start filling in your bio and what you're looking for.

No, but it's the fastest path to a Verified badge. Signing up with an institutional email — a .edu, .ac.in, .ac.uk, or similar domain — verifies your account automatically once you confirm a one-time code sent to that address.

You can still sign up with a personal email. Your profile will show as "Not verified" until you submit a manual verification request — you can add or switch to an institutional email later, or submit supporting documents for a real person on our team to review.

You can still build a profile and browse Discover, but sending connection requests and using the Feed and Opportunities board require a verified account — this keeps conversations and collaboration requests limited to confirmed academics.

Know Your Faculty is built specifically for teaching and research faculty. It isn't designed for students or administrative staff, and verification is built around confirming an active academic role.

Every professor you see in Discover shows a Collab Score — a live percentage calculated from your shared category, research tags, and what you're both seeking, such as a co-author, grant partner, or mentor. It recalculates for every profile so you can prioritize who's actually worth reaching out to.

A connection request only opens a conversation once it's mutual, like a match rather than a one-way message. This means nobody's inbox fills up with cold outreach they never agreed to.

Priority Connect is a paid option (₹49) that sends your connection request straight to the top of someone's inbox with an instant notification, instead of waiting in the regular queue. It's for the introductions that genuinely can't wait.

Conference Mode shows you which other Know Your Faculty professors are physically nearby, so if you're at the same conference or campus event, you can see who else from the network is in the room instead of relying on chance encounters.

Post what you're actively looking for — a co-PI, a guest lecture slot, a grant partner — and it's surfaced to professors in matching categories. It's a dedicated space for open academic asks, separate from general Feed updates.

The Feed is where professors share research updates, publications, and academic milestones with the network — a space built around academic work, not general social posting.

No subscription is required for the core app. Discover, connecting, messaging, and the Opportunities board are free. Featured Profile is the only recurring paid option, and it's entirely optional.

Instead of a separate payment screen for every paid action, you top up a small in-app wallet balance once and spend from it as needed — for Priority Connect, Post Boost, or Opportunities postings. It's designed to avoid repeat checkout friction for small purchases.

Post Boost (₹99) gives a Feed post priority visibility in your category for 7 days, so an important update or opportunity gets seen first instead of scrolling past.

Featured Profile (₹199/month) gives your profile a Featured badge and higher visibility in Discover within your category, plus space for up to two showcase links. It renews monthly until cancelled.

Yes — professors who use paid boosts regularly can buy bundles at a discount, like 5 Priority Connects for less than buying them one at a time.

One-time paid features — Priority Connect, Post Boosts, Opportunity postings — are non-refundable once the action has been completed, unless a payment was charged but the action failed due to a technical error, in which case contact Help & Support for investigation. Featured Profile can be cancelled anytime; cancellation stops future renewals but doesn't refund the current billing period. See the full Refund & Cancellation Policy.

Institutional email addresses verify automatically via a one-time code. Professors without an institutional email can submit a manual verification request with supporting documents, which our team reviews before approving.

Every profile has a report option. Reported profiles go through document verification review before staying active on the network, so misuse gets addressed directly rather than ignored.

Yes, you can block or unmatch another professor at any time from a conversation, which stops further contact from that account.

We only collect what's needed to run the platform and never sell personal data. The full Privacy Policy covers exactly what's collected and how it's used.

Yes — Know Your Faculty launches on Android on September 5, Teachers' Day. You can register for early access on the homepage to get notified the moment it's live.

iOS support is on the way, expected roughly a month after the Android launch. You can join the iOS waitlist on the homepage to get a one-time email when it's live.

If you want to reach professors with an event, book, course, or product rather than join as faculty yourself, see the Advertise with us page — no account needed.