Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) engages in the research, teaching, and application of statistics to the natural sciences and social sciences. Founded by Professor P.C. Mahalanobis (Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis) in Kolkata in 1931, while statistics was a relatively new scientific field, the institute gained the status of an Institution of National Importance by an act of the Indian Parliament in 1959. It was till then, loosely affiliated with the University of Calcutta.

The Headquarters of ISI is located in the northern fringe of the metropolis of Kolkata, in Baranagar, in Bon-Hoogly not far from the Dunlop Bridge. Three other centres are located in Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai. The ISIs teaching activities are in Kolkata, Delhi and Bangalore, while other cities in India have branch offices engaged in projects and consultancy in Statistical Quality Control and Operations Research. Presently, ISI has a total annual expenditure of over Rs. 15,000,000 and employs 250 faculty members, and over 1,000 supporting staff.

The Present Director is Prof. Sankar Kumar Pal (Sankar K Pal) The present Dean of Studies is Prof. Aditya Bagchi

ISI is generally regarded as being the best Indian school in the few areas of its expertise namely statistics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative economics, operations research and information science and is considered to be one of the few research oriented Indian schools at both, the undergraduate and graduate level.