CLAUDIO AGOSTINELLI is associate professor of statistics at the Department of Mathematics, University of Trento, Italy. He received his Ph.D. in statistics from the University of Padova, Italy, in 1998. Prior to joining the University of Trento, he was associate professor at the Department of Environmental Sciences, Informatics and Statistics, Ca' Foscari University of Venice, Italy. His principal area of research is robust statistics. He also works in statistical data depth, circular statistics and computational statistics with applications to paleoclimatology and environmental sciences. He has published over 35 research articles in international refereed journals. He is associate editor of Computational Statistics. He is member of the ICORS steering committee. AYANENDRANATH BASU is professor at the Interdisciplinary Statistical Research Unit of the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, India. He received his M.Stat. from the Indian Statistical Institute in 1986, and his Ph.D. in statistics from the Pennsylvania State University in 1991. Prior to joining the Indian Statistical Institute, he was assistant professor at the Department of Mathematics, University of Texas at Austin, U.S.A. Apart from his primary interest in robust minimum distance inference, his research areas include applied multivariate analysis, categorical data analysis, statistical computing and biostatistics. He has published over 90 research articles in international refereed journals, has authored and edited several books and book chapters. He is a recipient of the C.R. Rao National Award in Statistics given by the Government of India. He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, India, and the West Bengal Academy of Science and Technology. He is a past editor of Sankhya, The Indian Journal of Statistics, Series B. PETER FILZMOSER studied applied mathematics at the Vienna University of Technology, Austria, where he also wrotehis doctoral thesis and habilitation. His research led him to the area of robust statistics, resulting in many international collaborations and various scientific papers in this area. He has been involved in organizing several scientific events devoted to robust statistics, including the first ICORS conference in 2001 in Austria. Since 2001, he has been a professor in the Department of Statistics at the Vienna University of Technology, Australia. He was a visiting professor at the Universities of Vienna, Toulouse, and Minsk. He has published over 100 research articles, authored 5 books and edited several proceedings volumes and special issues of scientific journals. He is elected member of the International Statistical Institute. Dr. Diganta Mukherjee holds B.Stat., M.Stat., and Ph.D (Economics) degrees all from the Indian Statistical Institute. His research interests are Welfare & Development Economics and Finance. He is an ex-faculty of the Jawaharlal NehruUniversity, Essex University, and the ICFAI Business School. He is now a faculty at the Indian Statistical Institute. He has over 60 publications in national and international journals and has authored three books.He has been involved in projects with large corporate houses and various ministries of Govt. of India (GoI) and West Bengal Govt. He is acting as a technical advisor to MCX, RBI, SEBI, NSSO, and NAD (CSO).
