Selection of
Prof. Probal Chaudhuri for the National Award in Statistics in honour of
Prof.
C.R. Rao for the year 2004-2005.
For his outstanding contributions to Statistics, Dr. Probal Chaudhuri, Professor, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata has been selected for the National Award in Statistics in honour of Prof. C.R. Rao for the year 2004-2005.
Ministry of
Statistics & Programme Implementation has instituted two National Awards in
Statistics for outstanding contribution in the field of Statistics. One award is given to senior statistician in
memory of Prof. P.V. Sukhatme and the other award is given to young
statistician in honour of Prof. C.R. Rao.
Each of the above awards is given in alternate year. The award instituted in the year 1999-2000
carries a cash prize of Rs. one lakh.
The first
National Award in Statistics was given in 1999-2000 in memory of Prof. P. V.
Sukhatme to Prof. J. K. Ghosh,
distinguished statistician and former Director, Indian Statistical Institute,
Kolkata followed by the National Award in Statistics for the year 2000-2001,
for the young statistician category,
jointly to Dr. Rahul Mukerjee,
Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Kolkata and Dr. Rajeeva Laxman Karandikar, Professor,
Indian Statistical Institute, New Delhi for their outstanding contributions to
Statistics . For the year 2001-2002,
the National Award in Statistics in memory of Prof. P.V. Sukhatme was given to
Prof. Prem Narain, former Director of
Indian Agricultural Statistics Research Institute, New Delhi. Professor Arup Bose, Indian Statistical
Institute, Kolkata and Prof. Balvant Keshav Kale, Retired Head of Deptt. of Statistics, University of Pune were given the National Award in Statistics
in honour of Prof. C.R. Rao for the
year 2002-03 and the National Award in Statistics in memory of Prof.
P.V. Sukhatme for the year 2003-2004 respectively. Dr. Probal Chaudhuri, Professor, Indian Statistical
Institute, Kolkata has been selected for the National Award in
Statistics in honour of Prof. C.R. Rao for the year 2004-2005.
Dr. Probal Chaudhuri has made outstanding contribution of
fundamental nature to a number of important areas of current interest in
Statistics. His contributions in
multivariate analysis related to developing geometric notions of multivariate
quantiles as also extensions of the classical sign and rank test, using
features of multivariate clouds. These
contributions are considered as a major breakthrough in the area of
multivariate nonparametric inference.
More recently, the work of
Dr. Chaudhuri has centred around the development of exploratory tools for
visualization of statistically significant features in data. For example, the methods developed by Dr.
Chaudhuri enable one to discover statistically significant features in the income
distribution in different populations.
Dr. Chaudhuri is an excellent expositor and a
motivating teacher. In recognition of his outstanding research record, he has
been elected as an Associate Editor of the Journal of the American Statistical
Association, an honour that is very rare among statisticians from India.
The National Award in Statistics will be conferred on Prof. Probal Chaudhuri in an award presentation ceremony to be organized by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation.