  Pranab K. Sen has contributed extensively to many areas of Statistics
including order statistics, nonparametrics, robust inference, sequential
methods, asymptotics, biostatistics, clinical trials, bioenvironmental studies
and bioinformatics. His long list of over 600 publications and 22 books and
volumes along with numerous citations during the past 5 decades bear testimony
to his work. All three of us have had the good fortune of being associated with
him in different capacities. He has given professional and personal advice on
many occasions to all of us, and we feel that our lives have certainly been
enriched by our association with him. He has been over the years a friend,
philosopher and a guide to us, and still continues to be one! While parametric
statistical inference remains ever so popular, semi-parametric, Bayesian and
nonparametric inferential methods have attracted great attention from numerous
applied scientists because of their weaker assumptions, which make them
naturally robust and so more appropriate in real-life applications. This
clearly signals for ``beyond parametrics'' approaches which include
nonparametrics, semi-parametrics, Bayes methods and many others. Motivated by
this feature, and his drive in the ``beyond parametrics'' area, we thought that
it will be only appropriate for a volume in honor of Pranab Kumar Sen to focus
on this aspect of statistical inference and its applications. With this in
mind, we have put together this volume in order to (i) review some of the
recent developments in this direction, (ii) focus on some new methodologies and
highlight their applications, and (iii) suggest some interesting open problems
and possible new directions for further research.
