Name of the Event: Professor C.R. Rao Birth Centenary Celebrations
Date of the Event: 17th August to 10thSeptember, 2020
Mode:Online
Number of Attendees: 314
Organized By: Department of Statistics, Sunandan Divatia School of Science, Mumbai.
In order to celebrate the Birth Centenary of Celebrated Mathematician and Statistician, Professor Calympudi Radhakrishna Rao, the Department of` Statistics, SDSOS, Mumbai hosted a University-wide event that began on August 17, 2020 and came to its fruitful conclusion at 5:00 p.m. September 10, 2020- the day the Doyen of Statistic became the 27th legendary scientist to attain the age of 100.
The event was a brainchild of Dr K.S. Madhava Rao, Professor of Statistic and was conceptualized in coordination with Dr Pradnya Khandeparkar, Senior Adjunct Faculty, Statistics.
Held over five formats – four of which were pre-events comprising of various competitions and the fifth one, a grand finale in all its rights, was the virtual Conference where speakers who have known Professor C.R. Rao were invited to share their experiences of meeting the living legend.
The pre-event comprised of the following competitions:
Ø Portrait Drawing/Painting Competition: Students from all NMIMS campuses were invited to submit their art work of a portrait of Prof. C.R. Rao that had been presented to them. The numerous entries displayed not only the wide-array of creativity among these students of Statistics but also helped them express the luminant image they had of the great Statistician in their minds. The Deadline of submission was August 31, 2020.
The Winners
First Prize: Saunvida Sawant (MSc ASA I)
Second Prize: Abhinav Mishra (BSc ASA III)
Third Prize: Manali Salvi (MSc. Statistics I) & Aditi Bodke (MSc.
Statistics II)
Ø Poetry Competition: Participants were invited to submit their poetic composition about the life and works of Professor C.R. Rao. The winning entries described the Professor C.R. Rao’s inspiring life and contributions to the world of Statistics, Science and Research. The Deadline of submission was August 31, 2020.
The Winners
First Prize: Shaun Fernandes (MSc Statistics I)
Second Prize: Katyaini R. Choudhary (BSc ASA II)
Third Prize: Rohit Maurya (MSc. ASA I) & Ravi Tripathi (MSc. ASA II)
Ø Quiz Competition: All the students studying statistics in various campuses of NMIMS were asked to participate in a quiz competition, divided into two categories- Undergraduate and Postgraduate. The concepts that were tested formed the foundation of statistics, hence allowing a uniform playing field for both categories. The quiz was conducted between 4:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. on September 3, 2020, in a Microsoft Forms format.
The Winners
Category: Undergraduate:
First Prize: Aman Jain
(BSc. ASA III)
Second Prize: Shreya Iyer (BSc. ASA II)
Third Prize: Kenit Shah (BSc. ASA III) & Apoorv Dhyani (BSc ASA II)
Category: Post-Graduate
First Prize: Chinmay
Parulekar (MSc. ASA I)
Second Prize: Rutvik Dhopate (MSc. ASA I) & Ajay Dhadhi (MSc. ASA I)
Third Prize: Tanish Telisara (MSc. ASA I)
Ø Seminar Competition: Students were asked to present, any published research paper of Professor C.R. Rao that they found interesting, in a virtual Seminar. Participants were allowed to be either solo or in pairs, describing their understanding of the paper. The idea behind the concept was to ease students into the method of understanding research without getting in to the details of lemmas and theorems and their proofs, making the achievements of professor C.R. Rao more real to the participants.
The Winners:
First Prize: Yukta Mehra (MSc. ASA I) & Manali
Salvi (MSc. Statistics I)
Second Prize:Bhargavi Ghogle (MSc. ASA I) & Gayathri Iyer (MSc. ASA I)
Third Prize: Bikashkumar Jha & Nijith Kurup (MSc. Statistics II)
The live feed of C.R. Rao Birth Centenary Celebration Conference, started at 2:00 p.m. on the Thursday afternoon, September 10 2020, with a welcome address from Assistant Professor of Statistics, Mr. Prashant Dhamale of SDSOS, NMIMS. Thereafter, tribute was paid to the Goddess of Learning through a melodious incantation of Saraswati Vandana.
Dr Madhav Welling, Advisor to the President- SVKM &Chancellor-NMIMS, introduced the audience to legacy and history Shri Ville Parle Kelvani Mandal (SVKM) and told the story of how the Statistics Department came into existence.
Professor Sunil Shirvaiker, as the Program Director, Statistics, SDSOS spoke a few words about life and achievements of Dr. C. R. Rao.
Afterwards, the honourable guests and speakers for the occasion were introduced to the audience.
The speakers invited for the occasion were –
Dr V.S.S Yadavalli- Professor and head of Department of Industrial &Systems Engineering at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. He is a Fellow of the South African Statistical Association, Fellow of Royal Statistical Society, and the Fellow of Industrial Engineering & Operations Management Society (IEOM), USA. He has received various awards from various professional bodies like Industrial Engineering and Operations Management Society, USA South African Institute of Industrial Engineers, South African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy etc. for his contributions towards research.
Dr Nagaraj Neerchal- Professor of Statistics in the Department of Mathematics & Statistics, University of Maryland Baltimore County, Maryland, USA. He has one patent on his name, he has authored 4 books and has published more than 50 research papers in reputed international journals. He is the elected member of the executive committee of the council of university of Maryland Systems Faculty. He was awarded with Freeman Hrabowski Innovation Grants Award for Founding "The Math Gym” and also received University System of Maryland Board of Regents’ Award for Innovative Excellence to name a few
Dr K.S.M. Rao- Professor of Statistics, in NMIMS Deemed to be University Mumbai. Dr Rao has almost 5 decades of experience in the academics. In his long career, he has served various institutions, namely University of Alberta, Canada & University of Botswana, South Africa. His current area of research includes financial data analysis, nonparametric Inference. He has authored 2 books and has published more than 40 research papers in reputed international journals. He is currently, a reviewer of various International Journals, Biometrics, Communications in Statistics Theory and Methods.
They talked about the path-breaking achievements of Professor C.R. Rao, including, but in no way limited to Cramer-Rao Lower Bound, Rao-Blackwell Theorem andRao Distance. The speakers attested to the charisma of the eminent statistician by regaling the audience with various anecdotes of Dr C.R. Rao’s life and their encounters with him at different points of their career in Statistics and Mathematics.
At 4:00 p.m. Dr Pradnya Khandeparkar, announced the names of the winners of the aforementioned pre-event across-campus competitions that were held in the past month.
Hence, the event drew to a close with final words of the Program Director, Mr. Sunil Shirvaiker and a vote of thanks from Assistant Professor, Mathematics, Dr. Debasmita Mukherjee for all the students and members of the Statistics Department who made the event a huge success that it was.
