Dr. Rakesh Kumar, Assistant Professor, School of Mathematics, Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University, Katra delivered an Invited Talk in the 4th National Conference in Mathematics on Mathematical Sciences and Applications at GGM Science College, Jammu during 19-20 January, 2018. He also chaired one Technical Session. Dr. Kumar discussed his ongoing research work on Queuing Systems with Retention of Reneging Customers. The audience enjoyed the talk and got very much interested in the applications of such queuing systems. It is hoped that some new research collaborations may take place in near future. Dr. Rakesh expressed his thanks to the organizers of conference for inviting him in this national meeting.

Ms. Sehar Shakeel Raina and Ms. Ria Gupta research scholars of School of Mathematics, Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University have attended “International Conference on analysis and its applications” at Aligarh Muslim University, Uttar Pradesh from 20th- 22nd November, 2017. During the Conference, Ms. Sehar Shakeel Raina and Ms. Ria Gupta presented their research papers entitled “On Relative Normality and its Variants” and “On Some Generalizations of Normal Čech Closure Spaces” respectively. They also got opportunity to share their knowledge with the eminent academicians as well as research scholars/experts acrossthe globe.It is worth mentioning that Ms. Sehar Shakeel Raina and Ms. Ria Gupta are pursuing their Ph.D. under the supervision of Dr. A.K. Das, Assistant Professor and Head School of Mathematics. Vice-Chancellor Prof. Sanjeev Jain congratulated both the scholars for attending the International Conference.

Dr. Ajay K. Sharma, Asstt. Prof. Department of Mathematics, Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University, Katra presented a research paper entitled “Difference of composition operators” in the 6th International Conference on Mathematics and Information Sciences “ICMIS-17” which was held on 9th -11th, February, 2017 at Zewail city of Science and Technology, Cairo Egypt. In the conference some Eminent Professors from different countries like Russia, Turkey, Uzbekistan etc. also presented their work. In the research paper, Dr. Sharma presented an open problem concerning the difference of composition operators on the Hardy space.

Dr. Rakesh Kumar, Assistant Professor, School of Mathematics, Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University, Katra presented a research paper in an International Conference on “Analytical and Computational Methods in Probability Theory and its Applications (ACMPT-2017)” at Moscow, Russia. This conference is jointly organised by Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU) and Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia (RUDN), Moscow.

Dr. Kumar delivered his talk on the paper entitled, “Transient Analysis of a Multi-Server Queuing Model with Discouraged Arrivals and Retention of Reneging Customers” jointly co-authored with Ms. Sapana Sharma (Research Student, School of Mathematics). The work contained in this paper is a part of the research work carried under UGC Major Research Project entitled, “Transient Solutions of Markovian Queuing Models with Customers’ Impatience and Retention of Reneged Customers” 2015-2018. The multi-server queuing model considered in this paper can be used for modelling the computer-communication systems incorporating congestion control mechanism and having packet loss due to time-out mechanism. This paper is accepted for publication in the “Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS)” a Springer Series indexed by Scopus and ISI Conference Proceedings Citation index (Thomson Reuters).

It was a 5-day long huge conference attended by 250 renowned Mathematicians/Statisticians from all over the globe. There were a number of very informative Key Note talks. The conference was having four main tracks based on Analytical and Computational methods in probability theory and its applications. This conference proved very useful as most of the papers were on queuing theory. I could make some contacts with the renowned Professors from Russia, Spain, Bulgaria, Maldova and USA. It is hoped that some useful collaborations will take place in future.

This research visit was funded under Professional Development Assistance (PDA) scheme of Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University, Katra. Dr. Kumar is extremely thankful to the SMVDU authorities for allowing him to attend this conference.

Prof. V. K. Bhat, Dean, Faculty of Sciences, Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University visited Bern University of Applied Sciences, Bern, Switzerland to attend the 93rd workshop on General Algebra during Feb 10th -12th, 2017.

The workshop was jointly organized by University of Bern, Bern University of Applied Sciences and Pädagogische Hochschule Bern. It was attended by about one hundred leading Mathematicians from different countries that include India, U.S.A, Russia, Germany, Greece, Turkey, Slovakia, South Africa, Finland, Thailand, Veitnam, Serbia, Austria, Cameron, Japan, Ukraine etc. Research scholars from different Universities of Bern also attended the conference.

Latest developments in Mathematics (Algebra and applications) were discussed and presented during invited talks, contributory talks and other informal discussions. Prof. Bhat delivered a talk titled "On p-ideals of skew-polynomial rings over Noetherian rings" during the workshop.The visit was supported by Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB), Department of Science & Technology, Government of India.

On 19th July, 2017 Mr. Ravinder Singh an alumnus of 2013-15 batch of M.Sc. Mathematics visited the department and interacted with M.Sc. students. He has qualified JK SET and recently he got selected as 10+2 lecturer through JKPSC. He shared his experiences during his stay at this university. He answered various queries of the students related to preparation for competitive examinations especially NET, GATE etc. He had an hour long interaction with them. It was a very nice interaction. Dr. Rakesh Kumar coordinated the whole event.

Dr. Kuldip Raj, Asstt. Prof. Department of Mathematics, Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University, Katra presented a research paper entitled “Strongly convergent sequence spaces of Modulus functions and infinite matrix over n-normed spaces” in the 6th International Conference on Mathematics and Information Sciences “ICMIS-17” which was held on 9th -11th, February, 2017 at Zewail city of Science and Technology, Cairo Egypt. In the conference some Eminent Professors from different countries like Russia, Morocco, Turkey, Chicago, Uzbekistan etc. also presented their research work. In the research paper, Dr. Kuldip Raj highlighted the applications of matrices to generate some strongly convergent sequence spaces over n-normed spaces. He also given some characterizations of strongly convergent sequences and study their statistical convergence. Finally, he highlighted some results on Fourier series using Modulus functions and infinite matrix.