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 Chandra Mahalanobis in Presidency College, Kolkata. Established in 1931, this unique institution in India is one of the oldest institutions focused on statistics, and its early reputation led it to be adopted as a model for the first US institute of Statistics set up at the Research Triangle, North Carolina by Gertrude Mary Cox.
Mahalanobis, the founder of ISI, was deeply influenced by the wisdom and guidance of Rabindranath Tagore and Brajendranath Seal. Under his leadership, the institute initiated and promoted the interaction of Statistics with natural and social sciences to advance the role of Statistics as a key technology by explicating the twin aspects – its general applicability and its dependence on other disciplines for its own development. The institute is now considered one of the foremost centres in the world for training and research in Computer science, Statistics, Quantitative Economics and related sciences.
ISI has its headquarters in Baranagar, West Bengal. It has four subsidiary centres focused on academics in Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai and Tezpur, and a branch at Giridih. In addition, the institute has a network of units of Statistical Quality Control and Operations Research at Vadodara, Giridih, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Pune engaged in guiding the industries, within and outside India, in developing the most up–to–date quality management systems and solving critical problems of quality, reliability and productivity.
The primary activities of ISI are research and training of Statistics, development of theoretical Statistics and its applications in various natural and social sciences. Originally affiliated with the University of Calcutta, the institute was declared an institute of national importance in 1959, through an act of the Indian parliament, the Indian Statistical Institute act, 1959. ISI functions under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MOSPI) of the Government of India.
Key areas of expertise of ISI are Statistics, Computer Science, Mathematics, Mathematical Economics, Operations Research and Information Science and it is one of the few research oriented Indian schools offering courses at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.