According to eyewitness accounts, the gunman, armed with an assault rifle and hand grenades, opened fire on a group of delegates as they were walking from one building to another at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) campus where the conference was held. The man emerged from a parking area between the two buildings, sprayed bullets from the assault rifle and threw grenades toward the delegates before apparently jumping into a waiting car and disappearing into the night. The grenades did not go off.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but several reports in the Indian press speculated that a militant anti-Indian Islamist group was behind it.

M.C. Puri, a retired mathematics professor from the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi and a well-known member of ORSI, was killed in the attack. Four others were injured, including Professor Vijay Chandru of the IISc. Professor Chandru, who earned his Ph.D. at MIT and was one of the inventors of the Simputer, suffered multiple gunshot wounds that required extensive surgery. He is in the process of recovering from his injuries.

"We are saddened by the senseless violence in Bangalore resulting in loss of life and in serious injuries to members of our O.R. community," says INFORMS Past President Richard Larson. "We extend our deepest condolences to the family of Professor M.C. Puri. We are encouraged to hear that the injured are recovering and that our long-term friend and colleague, Vijay Chandru, is planning a recovery that will include medical attention in the United States. We at the MIT O.R. Center have already sent him a 'hang-in-there' get-well card, and soon the INFORMS Board will do the same, personally delivered."

An alum of MIT's O.R. Center and a tenured faculty member at Purdue University before returning to India to join IISc, Professor Chandru has many friends and colleagues at the ORC, including Larson and another former INFORMS president, Tom Magnanti. Magnanti was a member of Professor Chandru's Ph.D. committee at MIT. Current INFORMS President Mark Daskin met with Professor Chandru in Bangalore just last year.

MIT faculty member George Verghese, who visited Professor Chandru in the hospital in Bangalore in early January, reports that Chandru "has been improving steadily" and that he even prepared a video message for the people at Strand Life Sciences, the bioinformatics company Professor Chandru founded in 2000.

Despite the horrific experience, Professor Chandru still managed to bring a smile to many of the worried faces watching the video. According to Verghese, the wounded company founder greeted the employees as "their bullet-proof CEO."

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