As part of India's response to Covid-19, the Department of Science and Technology (DST) appointed a committee of experts fro within the Indian scientific community, and to arrive at a “COVID-19 India National Supermodel". The objective of this committee was to make projections about the progress of the disease over time, both at national and state levels. One of the key members of this committee is our guest, Prof. Manindra Agrawal. Prof. Manindra Agrawal is a professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and the Deputy Director at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. Among the many accolades he has received, Prof Agrawal has been a recipient of the prestigious Clay Research Award in 2002, the Godel Prize in 2006; and the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award in Mathematical Sciences in 2003. He has been honoured with Padma Shri in 2013. Prof. Manindra Agrawal (IIT Kanpur) co-authored SUTRA (a mathematical model for pandemics, with M Kanitkar (Integrated Defense Staff), and M Vidyasagar (IIT Hyderabad). SUTRA stands for Susceptible, Undetected, Tested (positive), and Removed Approach. In this episode, we talk to Prof. Agrawal to understand the role of the committee, terms of reference of the committee, challenges faced in modeling a pandemic, factoring in external factors such as insufficient testing etc. in the model and more. Join this channel to get access to perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfBfBd-1kvCOPxVll8tBJ9Q/join
