Khagol 121

The twelfth edition of the Radio Astronomy Winter School (RAWS) was conducted by the TLC of IUCAA along with the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA), Pune, during December 16 – 24, 2019. This school was attended by a total 36 participants, consisting of both faculty members and students from different colleges/universities across the country. The emphasis of RAWS was on hands-on experiments in radio astronomy supplemented by lectures on related topics, including signal processing and error analysis. The lectures were delivered by Joydeep Bagchi, Gulab Dewangan, Ranjeev Misra, D. J. Saikia, and R. Srianand (all from IUCAA), Poonam Chandra, Jayaram N. Chengalur, Bhal Chandra Joshi, Nissim Kanekar, Divya Oberoi, and Subhashis Roy (all from NCRA), and Avinash Deshpande (RRI, Bengaluru), who also demonstrated table-top radio astronomy experiments along with Jameer Manur, andAshishMhaske (both from IUCAA). There were three experiments done by the participants in groups, which were: (i) Observations of the Sun at Radio Wavelengths, (ii) Experiment on Understanding Noise Fundamentals (Johnson Noise), and (iii) Detection of Neutral Atomic Hydrogen (HI) from our Galaxy. These hands on experiments were done with great enthusiasm by all the participants, and were overseen by Prakash Arumugasamy (IUCAA), JoydeepBagchi, Jameer Manur, Ashish Mhaske, Bhal Chandra Joshi, Ruta Kale (NCRA),Subhashis Roy (NCRA), and Avinash Deshpande, and all were also the principal persons organizing the school along with Manojendu Choudhury, andD. J. Saikia. The visit to the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) was an exciting event for the participants as they had a close look at the control room, all the subsystems and one of the antennas of one of the most powerful and state-of-the-art radio telescopes in the world operating at low radio frequencies. RAWS ended with presentations by the participants, and a quiz based on what they had learnt during the school. Workshop on Statistical Applications in Astronomy and Astrophysics The Workshop on Statistical Applications in Astronomy and Astrophysics, funded by IUCAA, and with academic support from the IUCAA Centre for Astronomy Research and Development, at the University of Calcutta, Kolkata, was conducted at the Department of Statistics, Assam University, Silchar, during November 20 - 22, 2019. The need of having such a workshop, highlighting the applications of statistics with supporting software for computation was perceived by Asoke K. Sen (Dean, School of Physical Sciences, Assam University). The workshop was attended by 24 teachers, and research scholars, from the Departments of Statistics and Physics of different colleges and universities ofAssam, Meghalaya, and West Bengal. The opening lecture of the workshop was delivered by Dilip C. Nath (Vice-Chancellor, Assam University), who himself has been a well-known statistician in Large Sample Tests. Other speakers were: Sanjeev Dhurandhar (IUCAA), on Statistical detection of gravitational wave signals, Aditya Chattopadhyay (University of Calcutta), on Exploratory data analysis, Gaurangadeb Chattopadhyay (University of Calcutta), on Regression analysis, and Tanuka Chattopadhyay (University of Calcutta), on Astrophysics. The local resource persons: Radio Astronomy Winter School No. 121 - January 2020 9