Some families of combinatorial and other series identities and their applications

The main object of this presentation is to show how some simple combinatorial identities can lead to several general families of combinatorial and other series identities as well as summation formulas associated with the Fox-Wright function _pΨ_q and various related generalized hypergeometric functions. At least one of the hypergeometric summation formulas, which is derived here in this manner, has already found a remarkable application in producing several interesting generalizations of the Karlsson-Minton summation formula. We also consider a number of other combinatorial series identities and rational sums which were proven, in recent works, by using different methods and techniques. We show that much more general results can be derived by means of certain summation theorems for hypergeometric series. Relevant connections of the results presented here with those in the aforementioned investigations are also considered.