Post Graduate Diploma in Applied Statistics

Indian Statistical Institute

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About the Institute

The Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), founded by late Professor P. C. Mahalanobis in 1931, owes its origin to the statistical studies and research initiated by him in the Statistical Laboratory set up in Presidency College, Kolkata. The Institute was registered as a learned society under the Societies Registration Act in 1932. The Indian Statistical Institute Act was amended in 1995 empowering it to grant degrees and diplomas in Statistics, Mathematics, Quantitative Economics, Computer Science and such other subjects related to Statistics.

ISI has been striving to develop itself into an institution of excellence in education and research in consonance with the contemporary and future needs of India. The institute has earned an academic reputation world-wide both in postgraduate education and research work.

ISI functions under the Ministry of Statistics and programme Implementation (MOSPI) of the Government of India and hence is involved in high impact projects involving large data and also trains the key officers of the ministry. Some notable projects are:

  • Census of India
  • National Coal Index that is used by the Govt. of India in its auction process of coal mines.
  • National Mineral Index
  • Browser based data capture technology for NSSO survey
  • Estimation of quantum of fake Indian currency notes in circulation (reported in the Wall Street Journal, parliament queries were raised & post-demonetization is found to be the most accurate estimate) – NIA, MHA, Govt of India
  • Developing methods to estimate quantum of spurious drugs in circulation
  • Development of Systems to Reduce Road Fatalities and Grievous Injuries – Government of Tamil Nadu, Delhi Police, Faridabad Police
  • Development of Cleanliness Index of Urban Local Bodies (ULB) to Facilitate
  • Implementation of Swachh Bharat Abhiyan – Govt. of Tamil Nadu
  • Designing System to Assess and Improve Quality of Oil and Gas Data in India
  • Crypto Security Projects

About Faculty

ISI Kolkata has more than 250 faculty members who have achieved excellence in their research work and graduated from renowned universities across the world. The faculty at ISI regularly indulge in novel research both in the institute and the industry. Many of the faculty members hold important positions like editors of international journals, visiting faculty in many universities, advisors to government and industry.

The contribution of the faculty has been recognized frequently with awards such as the Padma Shri award, S. S. Bhatnagar Award, Fellowship of Indian Academy of Science to name a few. In October 2021, 18 scientists from ISI Kolkata got featured among the top 2% scientists in the subject fields of Artificial Intelligence & Image Processing, Fluids & Plasmas, Bioinformatics, Medicinal & Biomolecular Chemistry, Applied Physics in a global list compiled by the prestigious Stanford University. Out of these 14 scientists were in the field of ‘Artificial Intelligence & Image Processing’.

Featured Faculty

Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay

Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay

Director, Indian Statistical Institute

Professor Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay joined the Machine Intelligence Unit of the Indian Statistical Institute as a faculty member in 1999, after completing her PhD from the same Institute. She was the Director of the Institute from August 2015 to July 2020, and is currently on her second tenure as Director from September 2020 onwards. Sanghamitra has worked in various Universities and Institutes world-wide including in USA, Australia, Germany, France, Italy, China, Slovenia and Mexico, and delivered invited lectures in many more countries. She has received several awards and fellowships including the Bhatnagar Prize, Infosys award, TWAS Prize, DBT National Women Bioscientist Award (Young), INAE Silver Jubilee Prize, Young scientist/engineer medals of INSA, INAE and Science Congress, JC Bose Fellowship, Swarnajayanti Fellowship and Humboldt Fellowship. She is a Senior Associate of ICTP and Fellow of INSA, INAE, NASI and IEEE. She is currently a member of the Science, Technology and Innovation Advisory Council of the Prime Minister of India (PM-STIAC).

The current research interests of Prof. Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay include computational biology and bioinformatics, soft and evolutionary computation, pattern recognition and data mining. She has authored/co-authored more than 300 research articles in international journals, conferences and book chapters, and published six authored and edited books from publishers like Springer, World Scientific and Wiley. She has also edited journals special issues in the area of soft computing, data mining, and bioinformatics.

Debasis Sengupta

Debasis Sengupta

Dean of Studies, ISI Calcutta Professor, Applied Statistics

Dr. Debasis Sengupta completed his B.Tech degree from IIT Kharagpur and went on to do his master's and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering and Statistics from the University of Rhode Island, Kingston and University of California, Santa Barbara respectively. He has been a member of the faculty at the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata for over thirty years. He has taught many courses, carried out data driven research and numerous projects during this period.

Nachiketa Chattopadhyay

Nachiketa Chattopadhyay

Associate Professor and Head, Sampling & Official Statistics Unit (SOSU)

Dr. Nachiketa Chattopadhyay completed his Bachelor of Statistics, Master of Statistics and Ph.D. degrees from the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. At present, he is the Head of the Sampling and Official Statistics Unit at ISI, Kolkata. He has been an educator for more than 30 years in Statistics, Mathematics and Economics at undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

Probal Chaudhuri

Probal Chaudhuri

Head of Academic Group (HAG). Professor, Theoretical Statistics & Mathematics

Dr. Probal Chaudhuri is a professor at Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. He studied at Indian Statistical Institute and University of California at Berkeley. He is a fellow of all three Science Academies in India: Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore; National Academy of Sciences, Allahabad; and Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi. He is a recipient of C. R. Rao National Award in Statistics and Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for excellence in Science & Technology.

Anup Dewanji

Anup Dewanji

Professor, Applied Statistics

Dr. Anup Dewanji is a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. He completed his undergraduate and Master of Statistics from the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, and received his Ph.D. in Statistics from the University of Waterloo in Canada. His research work includes two and a half years of Post-Doctoral fellowship in Health and Welfare in Canada. He worked as a Staff Scientist in Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre, Seattle, USA, before returning to India to join the Indian Statistical Institute in 1988. His research is focused on Survival Analysis, Reliability, Cancer Modelling, Epidemiology, Clinical Trials and Applied Stochastic Processes. He has written nearly 90 papers in peer-reviewed journals.

Mausumi Bose

Mausumi Bose

Professor, Applied Statistics

Dr. Mausumi Bose completed her M.Sc. from Calcutta University and Ph.D. from Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. She is a professor in higher academic grade Applied Statistics unit at ISI, Kolkata. Her interests are in Design and Analysis of Experiments, Cross-over Experiments, Selection Problems, Sample Surveys, and applications in Cryptology.

Ambar Nath Ghosh

Ambar Nath Ghosh

Professor, Department of Economics

Dr. Ambar Nath Ghosh is a professor in the Economics Department at the Jadavpur University, Kolkata. His area of academic interest is in macroeconomics. He has over forty years of teaching experience and is author of the following books: Public Finance (3rd Edition), PHI Learning Private Limited, Delhi (2018) Macroeconomics (2nd Edition), PHI Learning Private Limited, Delhi (2021) Indian Economy: A Macro-theoretic Analysis, PHI Learning Private Limited, Delhi (2016) Keynesian Macroeconomics Beyond: the IS-LM Model, Springer (2019) An Introduction to Economics: Economic Theory and Society, Palgrave Macmillan (2019)

Arnab Chakraborty

Arnab Chakraborty

Associate Professor, Applied Statistics

Dr. Arnab Chakraborty teaches Statistics and Mathematics to undergraduate and postgraduate students at the Indian Statistical Institute Kolkata. He holds a PhD in Statistics from Stanford University. His area of interest is Pattern Recognition.

Malay Bhattacharyya

Malay Bhattacharyya

Assistant Professor, Machine Intelligence Unit

Professor Malay Bhattacharyya is currently an Assistant Professor of Machine Intelligence Unit, an Associate Member of Center for Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, and an Associate Member of Technology Innovation Hub on Data Science, Big Data Analytics, and Data Curation at Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. He is a certified Design Thinker from MIT Sloan School of Management and holds a doctorate in CS from Indian Statistical Institute. He has close to 7 years of teaching and 14 years of research experience. He is a recipient of the Impact Scholars Award from Google (2021), Young Engineer Award from INAE (2018), Young Engineers Award from IEI (2016-17), BIRD Award from Bioclues Organization (2015), Young Scientist Award from ISCA (2013-14), and has won several best paper awards. He became an INAE Young Associate in 2018 and a Sir Visvesvaraya Young Faculty Research Fellow in 2015-16.

Aloke Kar

Aloke Kar

Visiting Scientist. Former Official Statistician, Statistical Service, Government of India

Dr. Aloke Kar is a practicing statistician with extensive work experience in official statistics, focusing on Survey Design and National Accounts. He has served the Statistical Service of Government of India for more than 25 years in various capacities as well as two different institutions of the United Nations – Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia and the Statistical Institute for Asia and the Pacific – for about seven years. In the last seven years, he has been associated with the Indian Statistical Institute as a Visiting Scientist. He has extensive experience of teaching Official Statistics. He is a member of several advisory committees and technical groups set up by the Government of India.

P C Mohanan

P C Mohanan

Consultant and Subject Matter Expert. Former Official Statistician, Ministry of Statistics, Government of India

P C Mohanan has a post-graduation in Statistics and diploma in computer programming from Bangalore University. He started his professional service as an official statistician in 1979 as a member of the Indian Statistical Service and spent a considerable part of his career at the National Sample Survey Organization and the Central Statistical Organization. He was in charge of microdata archiving and data dissemination in the Ministry of Statistics at the time of retirement from the Government. He was appointed a Member of the National Statistical Commission in June 2017 and was the Acting Chairman of the Commission from October 2018 till January 2018. He was also a member of the expert committee on Agricultural Statistics, Technical Group on estimating housing shortage, Post Sachar Evaluation Committee and the Committee for Slum Index etc. After his retirement from the Government, he worked as a short-term consultant for national and international agencies on statistical projects. He has written articles on topics related to employment, migration, housing, government data policies etc.

Prabir Chaudhury

Prabir Chaudhury

Industry Expert. Former Deputy Director-General, National Sample Survey Office, Government of India

Prabir Chaudhury is a former Deputy Director-General, National Sample Survey Office, Govt. of India. He completed his Master of Statistics from ISI, Calcutta. He joined the Indian Statistical Service in 1985. His has worked with: 1. National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), Survey Design and Research Division (1987-99, 2003-14): planning surveys, designing questionnaires, development and refinement of estimation procedures, writing survey reports; 2. Directorate-General of Mines Safety (1999-2003): Developing software for analysis of mine accidents and judging of safety performance; 3. Sampling and Official Statistics Unit, ISI (2015-2019): Analysis of NSS consumer expenditure data to investigate effects of data collection methods on survey estimates. Areas of interest: Influence of reporting behaviour and reporting biases on survey estimates, choice of reference period and its effects on survey data, writing survey reports.

Satyabrata Chakrabarti

Satyabrata Chakrabarti

Industry Expert. Former Deputy Director-General, Central Statistics Office, Government of India.

Satyabrata Chakrabarti, a Post-Graduate in Statistics from University of Calcutta is a Former Deputy Director-General, Central Statistics Office, Government of India. In his career as an ISS officer, he was well known for his work in the field of Social Statistics. After his retirement, he has worked for the integration of the UN-SDGs in India at the State level. Earlier, his contribution towards the harmonization of the MDG-framework in the Indian context and for the development of an Indian adaptation: ‘DevInfo India’ as a tool for Human Development monitoring of the country was pioneering work. He was associated with the international initiatives, particularly of the UN organizations, concerning gender mainstreaming and for gender-responsive data collection, monitoring, and reporting.

Applications for the March 2024 cohort are open.

To learn more about the programme:


Only limited seats available.

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Classes start on 14 March 2024.


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