Sanat K. Sarkar is the Cyrus C. K. Curtis Professor of Statistics in the Department of Statistics, Operations, and Data Science at the Fox School of Business, Temple University. He earned his B.Sc. in Statistics from Presidency College (now University) in India, and his M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Statistics from Calcutta University. While completing his Ph.D., he served as a Lecturer in the Department of Statistics at Calcutta University. He subsequently joined the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Pittsburgh as a Research Associate before joining Temple University in 1982, where he has been a faculty member and served as Department Chair from 2012 to 2022.
Sarkar is an internationally recognized researcher who has made foundational contributions to the development of multiple testing, significantly advancing its applications in modern scientific investigations. Notably, he is known for providing a proof of Simes’ conjecture. His work has been supported by numerous National Science Foundation grants, several as Principal Investigator, and published in leading statistical journals, including Annals of Statistics, Journal of the American Statistical Association, and Biometrika. He has delivered over 80 invited lectures worldwide, including plenary talks and named lectures, at major national and international conferences and academic institutions.
A Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and the American Statistical Association, and an Elected Member of the International Statistical Institute, Sarkar has received multiple awards for research excellence, including the Musser Award for Leadership in Research, as well as repeated recognition for top-tier publications and outstanding performance in sponsored projects at the Fox School.
He has provided extensive service to the statistical community, serving as Associate Editor for Annals of Statistics, The American Statistician, and Sankhyā: Series B, as well as on review panels for journals and funding agencies worldwide. He co-organized a major NSF-CBMS-funded conference on Multiple Comparison Procedures and has served on the organizing committees of several international conferences on the same topic, most recently leading the 13th International Conference on Multiple Comparison Procedures (MCP 2025) in Philadelphia. He has also organized and chaired sessions at numerous other international conferences.
At Temple University, Sarkar has taught a wide range of undergraduate and graduate courses, supervised more than 30 doctoral students as primary advisor, and mentored many others through doctoral advisory committees and independent studies.
In addition to his academic work, he has served as a statistical consultant and advisory board member for pharmaceutical companies and research organizations, applying his expertise to complex problems in medicine, biology, and industry, and helping bridge the gap between theory and practice