Department of Statistics of St. Xavier’s University, Kolkata (SXUK) organized an invited lecture on ‘Group Testing Designs: A Combinatorial Marvel’ by Prof. Bikas Kumar Sinha, an eminent academician on September 8, 2022.

Prof. Sinha, a former faculty of the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata explained the concept of ‘Group Testing Designs’ in planning a testing procedure so that there exists no ambiguity and reduction in the number of such tests. He also mentioned that testing involves a collection of units in several groups rather than in isolation so as to ascertain the ‘status’ of each individual unit in the collection by taking into consideration of any well-defined ‘feature’.

His insightful lecture motivated the postgraduate students of all three departments i.e. Statistics, Economics and Computer Science to explore this emerging domain and illustrated the relevance of the topic to different aspects of their subjects. The discussion concluded with an interactive session with the present dignitaries, faculty members and students.

Dr. Manisha Pal & Dr. Priyanka Talukdar