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