Preface: Volume 15

Abstract On the occasion of the birth centenary of Professor Raj Chandra Bose, who made epoch-making contributions to various branches of Mathematics and Statistics, the Indian Statistical Institute organized R. C. Bose Centenary Symposium on Discrete Mathematics and Applications during 20 to 23 December 2002 at its campus at 203, B. T. Road, Kolkata 700 108. The topics included Combinatorics and Graph Theory, Design of Experiments, Coding Theory, Cryptology, Combinatorial Optimization, Algorithms and Applications. The papers submitted were pre-refereed by the members of the Editorial Committee formed for the purpose and the present volume of Electronic Notes in Discrete Mathematics contains (extended) abstracts of the papers/talks chosen for presentation in the Symposium. The full papers are being refereed further and those accepted will be included in the Proceedings which will appear as a special volume of Discrete Mathematics. Besides the papers included in this volume, there were talks by Prof. D.K. Ray-Chaudhuri on Candalabra systems, group-divisible t-designs, and a new infinite family of Steiner 3-designs, by Prof. Neil Robertson on Strong Perfect Graph Theorem and by Prof. M. C. Golumbic on Advances on Tolerance graphs and Related Families. I thank the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India and Reserve Bank of India for the financial support provided by them. I also take this opportunity to thank the participants from India and abroad and the members of the Organizing Committee and the Editorial Committee as well as all the others who have made the Symposium possible and a fitting tribute to the memory of R.C. Bose.