Rajesh Sundaresan
Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru
Rajesh Sundaresan is a Professor in the Department of Electrical Communication Engineering and the Dean of the Division of Electrical, Electronics, and Computer Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science. His research interests are in decision theory, communication, computation, and control over networks, cyber-social systems, and more recently, data-driven public health responses in the context of COVID-19. For some recent COVID-19 modelling and computational epidemiology works, please visit: https://cni.iisc.ac.in/covid-19-response/
Session 1D — Symposium: “Some applications of probability and statistics”
Organizers: Arup Bose (ISI, Kolkata) and Kapil H Paranjape (IISER, Mohali)
Statistical principles in the design of serosurveys View Presentation
Infections were near a peak in Karnataka during September 2020 when a state wide COVID-19 serosurvey was conducted. For accurate total disease-burden estimation during such periods, both the active infection and the seroprevalence of antibodies to the virus must be estimated. This requires the use of multiple tests, e.g., antigen and RT-PCR tests for active infection estimation, and serology for antibody prevalence estimation. We will discuss the challenges in combining data from multiple tests, the science of optimal design, what ought to have been the design, and how this optimal design was used in the second survey in January-February 2021.<br /><br /> The talk will be based on joint work with collaborators from the Indian Institute of Public Health, Indian Statistical Institute, Strand Life Sciences, and the Indian Institute of Science.