This issue of the Journal of Statistical Theory and Practice is dedicated to Professors Bimal K. Sinha and Bikas K. Sinha on the occasion of their 70th birthday.
Professors Bimal K. Sinha and Bikas K. Sinha were born on the 16th of March, 1946 in undivided India in the village of Atgharia, District Pabna, now in Bangladesh. The family migrated to India in the 1950’s. They received their Ph.D. in statistics from the University of Calcutta in the early 1970’s. Over the years, they have established themselves as outstanding statisticians, having made fundamental contributions to several areas of statistics.
After a successful career as a faculty member of the Indian Statistical Institute and the University of Pittsburgh, Bimal Sinha joined University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) in 1985 as a Professor of Statistics. He is in fact the founder of the Statistics Graduate Program at UMBC. Professor Sinha has received numerous awards and recognitions for his research, teaching and service to the statistics profession and to UMBC. These include elected Fellowship of both the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and the American Statistical Association, UMBC’s Presidential Research Professorship and the University System of Maryland Board of Regents Research Professorship. Professor Sinha is the author of four books, more than 150 research articles, and has supervised the doctoral work of about 30 students. For over twenty years, Professor Sinha worked on many aspects of environmental statistics, and his recent research also includes problems related to confidentiality protection at the US Census Bureau.
Professor Bimal K. Sinha served on the Editorial Boards of a number of statistical Journals; he was co-editor of Sankhya, Series A (1981–1997) and Series B (1998–1999), Editorial Board Member of the Journal of Multivariate Analysis (1981–1982), Editor of the Calcutta Statistical Association Bulletin (2003–2007), Associate Editor of the Journal of Applied Statistical Science (1992-), the Journal of Environmental Statistics (1992-), the Journal of Environmental Modeling and Assessment (1994-), Statistics and Decisions (1993–2001) and the Journal of Statistical Planning and Inference (1994–2002). He has traveled extensively; being an invited speaker at numerous international conferences, and he also has several international collaborations.
Bikas K. Sinha is a former faculty of the Calcutta University Department of Statistics and a Visiting Faculty at the Institute of Mathematics, Federal University of Bahia, Brazil. He joined the Indian Statistical Institute, Calcutta as an Associate Professor of Statistics in 1979, and was promoted to Professor of Statistics in 1985. He has been a Visiting Scientist/Visiting Professor at several universities in the USA with teaching and research assignments. He has collaborated with statisticians within India and abroad and has an impressive record of more than 90 research collaborators. Professor Bikas Sinha is the author/co-author of Springer-Verlag monographs and graduate-level text books (Wiley & Sage) and has over 140 published research articles. His expertise is on Optimal Experimental Designs and Finite Population Inference. He has served on the Editorial Boards of a number of statistical Journals: he served as Editorial Board Member of Sankhya (1985–1995), as Associate Editor of the Journal of Statistical Planning and Inference (1992–1997) and the Calcutta Statistical Association Bulletin (1988–1992) where he also served as Editor (1993–2000). He also had editorship duties in the Pakistan Journal of Statistics, International Journal of Statistical Science, Statistical Methodology, Statistics, Statistics & Decisions and the Journal of Combinatorics & Information System Sciences. He received a number of awards, among which is the P. C. Mahalanobis Gold Medal in 1980. He is an Elected Member of the International Statistical Institute since 1985, President of the Indian Science Congress, Statistics Section (2000–2001) and Member of the National Statistical Commission of the Government of India (2006–2009). During recent years, Professor Bikas Sinha is a regular visitor at the US Bureau of Census under the “Summer at Census” visitor plan.
We are privileged to guest-edit this special issue of the Journal of Statistical Theory and Practice in recognition of the scientific contributions of these two outstanding statisticians.