Bimal Kumar Roy is an Indian statistician, cryptologist, and academic. He served as the Director of the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) from 2010 to 2015 and was later appointed Chairperson of the National Statistical Commission, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Government of India, in 2019.
Education
Roy earned a Bachelor of Statistics (B.Stat.) in 1978 and a Master of Statistics (M.Stat.) in 1979 from the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. He received a Ph.D. in Combinatorics and Optimization in 1982 from the University of Waterloo, Canada, under the joint supervision of Ronald C. Mullin and Paul Jacob Schellenberg. His doctoral dissertation was titled "On Isomorphic Subgraphs Having Minimum Intersections."
Academic Career
Roy joined the Indian Statistical Institute as a Lecturer in the Computer Science Unit in 1984. He became an Associate Professor in 1989 and was promoted to Professor in the Applied Statistics Unit in 1997. He served as Director of the Indian Statistical Institute from 2010 to 2015. He also held the position of Head of the R. C. Bose Centre for Cryptology and Security at ISI from 2015 to 2021. Earlier in his career, he was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the State University of New York at Utica (1982–1984) and an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at a state university in the USA (1990–1991).
Contributions to Cryptology
Roy is regarded as a pioneer of cryptology research and education in India. He founded the Cryptology Research Group at the Indian Statistical Institute and has been the Founder and General Secretary of the Cryptology Research Society of India since its inception in 2001. He was instrumental in initiating the INDOCRYPT conference series, a leading international conference on cryptology held annually in India. He served as Program Chair for ASIACRYPT 2005 and edited several volumes in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science series for INDOCRYPT, FSE 2004, and ASIACRYPT 2005.
He has developed cryptographic algorithms for several Indian government agencies, including the Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO), the Indian Navy, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), and the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC). He also served as an adviser to the Special Protection Group (SPG) for secure wireless communications.
Research
Roy's primary research interests include combinatorics, statistics, and the application of statistics in cryptology and the design of experiments. He has published approximately 40 papers in refereed journals, around 20 book chapters and conference proceedings, and over 20 papers in cryptology and information security. He has supervised 13 doctoral theses and more than 50 master's dissertations.
Awards and Honours
- Padma Shri (2015) – India's fourth-highest civilian honour, awarded by the Government of India for his contributions to education.
- Teacher's Award (2014) – Indian National Science Academy.
- Fellow, National Academy of Sciences, India (2010).
- Fellow, Indian Society for Probability and Statistics (2014).
- Reliance Platinum Jubilee Award (2007) – National Academy of Science, India.
- IBM Faculty Award (2007) – for research, teaching, and initiative in cryptology.
Removal as Director
In June 2015, Roy was removed from his post as Director of the Indian Statistical Institute by the central government, less than two months before the scheduled end of his tenure. The government order cited concerns over "propagation of indiscipline and mischief, including acts of administrative and financial impropriety." This action was criticized by the international academic community, including the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR), which issued an open letter to the President of India expressing concern over the removal.
Other Roles
Roy has served on numerous advisory and governing bodies, including the National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO), the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the Department of Science and Technology (DST), the National Board for Higher Mathematics (NBHM), the India-Japan Science Council, and the Indo-French Centre for the Promotion of Advanced Research (CEFIPRA). He has also served as Principal Advisor at TCG CREST.
