RSSeNEWS to be determined...

Pictured: chief postmaster general of Andhra Pradesh Circle releasing the special postal cover in the presence of C Rangarajan (chairman, prime minister’s Economic Advisory Council) and SE Hasnain (vice chancellor, University of Hyderabad)

Two conferences were held to celebrate the 90th birth year of honorary fellow CR Rao, one in Hyderabad on 30 December – 2 January entitled ‘International conference on frontiers of interface between statistics and sciences’ and another in Kolkata on 10-11 January entitled ‘Advances in statistical science 2010’.

The Hyderabad conference was attended by 250 delegates from USA, Europe and Japan and a number of Rao’s students working in different parts of the world. This contained plenary talks by SRS Varadhan, T Kailath and SE Hasnain and the presentation of about 170 research papers by outstanding scholars on frontier areas of bioinformatics, econometrics and socioeconomic planning, astrostatistics, machine learning, game theory, data mining, mimo wireless, operations research, cryptology, environmetrics and multivariate statistical inference. A one-day session was held on ‘Quantum statistical inference’ and there was also a session devoted to research contributions made by Rao, especially in the forties.

The conference was inaugurated with a function to commemorate Rao, a highlight being the release of a special postal cover bearing his portrait and cancellation with the logo of ‘C.R. RAO AIMSCS’ by the chief postmaster general of Andhra Pradesh Circle.

As a curtain raiser, on the eve of the conference, a function was held to celebrate the opening of a stretch of the road covering the University of Hyderabad and several educational institutions by the mayor of Hyderabad. This is to be named ‘The Prof. C.R.Rao Road’.

The conference in Kolkata was also well attended by participants from a number of countries. A highlight was the presentation of an album containing 168 photos taken of Rao with others at various functions during his 40 years of service at the Indian Statistical Institute.

At the age of 90, Rao continues to be active in promoting statistical education and research in statistics in India and in publishing research papers. His bio data lists about 50 papers published by him (at least two papers in 2009) and 14 Handbooks of Statistics edited by him in collaboration with others since his retirement in 2000.

Report by SB Rao and TJ Rao of the CR Rao Advanced Institute of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science