Rajeeva Laxman Karandikar (born 11 June 1956) is an Indian mathematician, statistician and psephologist. He served as the director of

Chennai Mathematical Institute Chennai Mathematical Institute (CMI) is a higher education and research institute in Chennai, India. It was founded in 1989 by the SPIC Science Foundation, and offers undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in physics, mathematics and comp ...

(CMI) from 2010 until 2021 and now he is Professor Emeritus at CMI. He is a Fellow of the

Indian Academy of Sciences The Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore was founded by Indian Physicist and Nobel Laureate C. V. Raman, and was registered as a society on 24 April 1934. Inaugurated on 31 July 1934, it began with 65 founding fellows. The first general meet ...

and

Indian National Science Academy The Indian National Science Academy (INSA) is a national academy in New Delhi for Indian scientists in all branches of science and technology. In August 2019, Dr. Chandrima Shaha was appointed as the president of Indian National Science Acade ...

. He is also the Chairman of the National Statistical Commission, Government of India.

Academic life

He received his B.Sc. degree in mathematics from

Holkar Science College Holkar Science College, officially Government Model Autonomous Holkar Science College, also known as Holkar College is an institute in Indore, Madhya Pradesh.It was established on 10 June 1891 by His Highness Maharajadhiraja Raj Rajeshwar Saw ...

, University of Indore, Indore in June 1976 and his M.Stat. from

Indian Statistical Institute Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) is a higher education and research institute which is recognized as an Institute of National Importance by the 1959 act of the Indian parliament. It grew out of the Statistical Laboratory set up by Prasanta C ...

in July 1978. He later obtained his PhD degree from ISI, Calcutta in December 1981. He went for his

postdoctoral research A postdoctoral fellow, postdoctoral researcher, or simply postdoc, is a person professionally conducting research after the completion of their doctoral studies (typically a PhD). The ultimate goal of a postdoctoral research position is to pu ...

University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, th ...

to work under

Gopinath Kallianpur Gopinath Kallianpur (1925–2015) was an Indian American mathematician and statistician who became the first director of the Indian Statistical Institute (1976–79) under its new Memorandum of Association. During his tenure as the director the n ...

. He spent three years as a visiting professor at

University of North Carolina The University of North Carolina is the multi-campus public university system for the state of North Carolina. Overseeing the state's 16 public universities and the NC School of Science and Mathematics, it is commonly referred to as the UNC S ...

at Chapel Hill and returned to Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi in 1984 as an associate professor. He became a full professor in 1989. In 2006, he moved to Cranes Software International Limited as executive vice president for analytics. He moved to

in 2010.

Research

His research interests include several areas of probability theory, Finitely additive probability measures, stochastic calculus, martingale problems and Markov processes, Filtering theory, option pricing theory, psephology in the context of Indian elections and cryptography, among others.

Other activities

He has conducted opinion polls for Indian Parliamentary elections and state assembly polls for

Doordarshan Doordarshan (abbreviated as DD; Hindi: , ) is an Indian public service broadcaster founded by the Government of India, owned by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and one of Prasar Bharati's two divisions. One of India's largest b ...

, Aaj Tak/T V Today,

Network 18 Network18 Media & Investments Limited, (formerly SGA Finance and Management Service and Network18 Fincap Limited) commonly referred to as the Network18 Group and sometimes as the Network18–Eenadu Group, is an Indian media conglomerate owned b ...

, ''

Hindustan Times ''Hindustan Times'' is an Indian English-language daily newspaper based in Delhi. It is the flagship publication of HT Media, an entity controlled by the KK Birla family, and is owned by Shobhana Bhartia. It was founded by Sunder Singh Ly ...

'', ''

Indian Express ''The Indian Express'' is an English-language Indian daily newspaper founded in 1932. It is published in Mumbai by the Indian Express Group. In 1999, eight years after the group's founder Ramnath Goenka's death in 1991, the group was split be ...

'',

ABP News ABP News is an Indian Hindi-language free-to-air television news channel owned by ABP Group. The news channel was launched in 1998 originally as STAR News before being acquired by ABP Group. It won the Best Hindi News Channel award in the 21 ...

. He has also conducted training programmes on

Stochastic Calculus Stochastic calculus is a branch of mathematics that operates on stochastic processes. It allows a consistent theory of integration to be defined for integrals of stochastic processes with respect to stochastic processes. This field was created an ...

for

ICICI Bank ICICI Bank Limited is an Indian Private bank. It is headquartered at Mumbai. It offers a wide range of banking products and financial services for corporate and retail customers through a variety of delivery channels and specialized subsidiar ...

and other financial organizations. Over the last 25 years, he has also used his statistical and mathematical understanding in various application areas- this started with Opinion poll based election prediction. Over the last two decades, he has played a role in various fields: He was consulted by the Central bureau of Investigations (CBI) in a case regarding cheating in a multiple choice examination. He has worked with Weapons & Electronics Systems Engineering Establishment (WESEE), under Ministry of Defense, Government of India on Cryptography and developed Block Ciphers for WESEE. He was engaged by Clearing Corporation of India (CCIL) during 2016-2019 to review Risk Management Models and Processes at CCIL. He was Chairman of the working group of the National Sample Survey, for the 71st Round. He was a member of the committee constituted by Election Commission (EC) of India to advise EC on the sampling scheme for EVM-VVPAT verification. The report was the basis of EC's final reply to the Supreme Court just before the 2019 parliamentary poll. He was a member of the expert committee constituted by the Supreme Court (with Justice Singhvi (Retd) as Chairman, Mr Nandan Nilkeni, Dr V. Bhatkar as members) in 2019 regarding suggesting steps to deal with fraud in online examinations.

Books

* * *

References

1956 births Living people 20th-century Indian mathematicians Probability theorists Indian Statistical Institute alumni Recipients of the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award in Mathematical Science {{india-mathematician-stub