Title: Professor Emeritus
Affiliation: Chennai Mathematical Institute (CMI)
Email:rlk@cmi.ac.in
Bio: Prof. Rajeeva Laxman Karandikar is Professor Emeritus at the Chennai Mathematical Institute (CMI), Tamil Nadu, and Chairman of the National Statistical Commission, Government of India. He earned his Ph.D. (1981) and M.Stat. (1978) from the Indian Statistical Institute, Calcutta, and a B.Sc. (1976) from the University of Indore. Over his illustrious career, he has held prominent positions such as Associate Professor and Professor at the Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi, Distinguished Professor and Director at CMI (2011–2021), and Executive Vice President at Cranes Software International Limited. He is a recipient of numerous prestigious awards, including the Young Scientist Medal (1985), the S.S. Bhatnagar Prize (1999), the National Award in Statistics in honor of Prof. C.R. Rao, and the P.C. Mahalanobis Gold Medal (2014). He is an elected Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences and the Indian National Science Academy.
Dr. Karandikar has served in key administrative roles, including Professor-in-Charge of the Division of Theoretical Statistics and Mathematics at ISI Kolkata and Head of the Delhi Centre, ISI. His contributions extend beyond academia to consultancy in statistics, sampling, optimization, and cryptography. Notably, he has advised the Election Commission of India on EVM-VVPAT verification, consulted for the Supreme Court on combating fraud in online examinations, and collaborated with organizations like CCIL, CBSE, and Food Corporation of India. He has pioneered methodologies for opinion polls and seat prediction in Indian elections, working with leading media houses and academic institutions.
An expert in stochastic calculus, semimartingales, filtering theory, finite additive probability, and cryptography, Dr. Karandikar’s research interests span areas such as Monte Carlo simulation, financial applications of stochastic processes, psephology, and bioinformatics. He has also been instrumental in developing algorithms for power exchanges and cryptographic solutions for the Indian Navy.