Rahul Mukerjee earned his BSc (Hons) in Statistics and MSc (Statistics) from the University of Calcutta, with rank first in first class in both examinations. He obtained his PhD degree (1982) from the University of Calcutta. He held faculty positions at the University of Calcutta (1980-82) and the Indian Statistical Institute (1982-89) where he was awarded an out of turn promotion to full professorship at the age of thirty three. From 1989 to his superannuation in 2021, he was a Professor of Statistics at the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (in the Higher Academic Grade, since its inception in 2009), where he is currently a National Science Chair of the Government of India. He is also an INSA Emeritus Scientist.

Mukerjee held visiting positions in many institutions abroad including Harvard University, Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (Berkeley), Rutgers University, University of Michigan, Pennsylvania State University, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Toronto, University of Waterloo, Simon Fraser University, Hiroshima University, Academia Sinica (Taipei), Hong Kong Baptist University and National University of Singapore. He was a member (2013-16) of the National Statistical Commission, Government of India, and an independent director (2017-20) of Gas Authority of India Limited (GAIL), a Maharatna company of the Government of India.

Academic and Research Achievements: Mukerjee's research interests pertain to several broad areas of statistics including design of experiments, asymptotic theory, survey sampling and causal inference. In design of experiments, he focused on factorial designs concentrating on the issues of orthogonality and optimality under traditional as well as modern criteria such as minimum aberration, which aim at capturing model uncertainty. He also worked on topics like optimal response surface designs, repeated measurements designs and applications to visual cryptography, in addition to contributing to the problems of existence and construction of orthogonal arrays. Mukerjee's work in asymptotic theory covers areas such as higher order comparison of tests and confidence intervals, probability matching priors and empirical likelihood. He also obtained powerful results on the interface between causal inference and finite population sampling. Mukerjee has authored/co-authored five monographs and has published over 250 research papers in refereed journals.

Other Contributions: Continuously for over a quarter century (1995-2021), Mukerjee has been on the editorial boards of one of more top journals in his field, such as Annals of Statistics (USA, 1995-2009), Biometrika (UK, 2008-2021), and Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B (UK, 2000-2004). He has been a member of the Governing Council, Indian Statistical Institute, for six terms. He serves regularly as a reviewer for research funding agencies across the world. 

Awards and Honours: 

(1) National Science Chair, 2021-24, Government of India,

(2) PV Sukhatme National Award in Statistics, 2018, Government of India,

(3) Mahalanobis International Award, 2017, International Statistical Institute, The Netherlands, 

(4) JC Bose National Fellowship, 2010-20, Government of India,

(5) SS Bhatnagar Award in mathematical sciences, 2000, Government of India,

(6) National Award in Statistics in honor of Professor CR Rao, 2001, Government of India,

(7) Fellow, Institute of Mathematical Statistics, USA, elected in 1999,

(8) Fellow, Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore, elected in 2001,

(9) Fellow, National Academy of Sciences, Allahabad, elected in 2003,

(10) Young Scientists' Award, 1985, Indian Science Congress Association.