India has a rich and long heritage in Probability Theory and Stochastic Processes. Indian researchers, working both within India and abroad, are making quality contribution to the subject individually as well as collaboratively. To sustain this effort it is imperative to expose the young research scholars of India to the latest techniques and advances in the subject as well as increase the interaction between researchers in India. To achieve this and create collaborative probability groups within India we believe there is a need to have annually organized workshops.
Towards this, Lectures on Probability and Stochastic Processes (LPS), an annual workshop was started in 2006 by Antar Bandyopadhyay, Krishanu Maulik and Siva Athreya. It usually has two mini courses on topics of recent interest given by experts in the respective areas. These courses are expected to expose the participants to the important problems being considered in the current literature, as well as the available techniques to work with them. A large audience, which includes research scholars and young PhDs, from different institutes and universities of India, as well as few foreign participants, are invited to the workshop. It is expected that this gathering will initiate collaborative work across different research centres of India. To facilitate this activity, the workshop has sufficient time for sessions, where researchers can pose and discuss problems, which can be of interest to others in the audience.
There is a huge potential of Probability Theory in solving problems from diverse scientific fields such as Statistical Physics, Networking and Electrical Engineering, Financial Mathematics, Mathematical Biology, Genetics, and Computer Science. The workshop tries also to invite people from these fields to initiate fruitful interdisciplinary research work, which can have practical applications outside the domain of Probability Theory. We are confident that this workshop series will continue to act as a forum to build a strong school of probabilists in India and further our long tradition of strong contributions to the subject.