Faculty Profile for Dr. Tahir Ekin

profile photo for Dr. Tahir Ekin
Dr. Tahir Ekin
Professor - Endowed Chair — Dept of Information Systems & Analytics
Program Staff — Center for Analytics & Data Science
MCOY 404
phone: (512) 245-2291
Scholarly/Creative Work
Awards
Grants
Service

Biography Section

Biography and Education

 Tahir Ekin is Fields Chair in Business Analytics and Professor of Analytics at McCoy College of Business, Texas State University. His teaching experience include the areas of statistics, optimization, data mining and analytics. His areas of expertise include health care fraud analytics and decision modeling under uncertainty.

His book on health care fraud analytics titled “Statistics and Health Care Fraud: How to Save Billions" has been published by ASA-CRC Series on Statistical Reasoning in Science and Society. His scholar work has appeared in a variety of academic journals including European Journal of Operational Research, Annals of Operations Research, International Statistical Review, The American Statistician, and JRSS Series C. His research has been funded more than $1M by federal, state and private agencies and foundations including National Science Foundation, Air Force Scientific Office of Research, Texas Health and Human Services, and BBVA Foundation. It has been recognized by awards from external organizations including International Society for Business and Industrial Statistics (ISBIS), American Statistical Association (ASA), Statistical Applied Mathematical Sciences Institute (SAMSI), University of Cagliari, American Council for Technology-Industry Advisory Council, and MITRE. He was awarded the 2016-2018 Brandon Dee Roberts Endowed Professorship, 2018, 2020 and 2022 Presidential Distinction Awards for Excellence in Scholarly/Creative Activity, and in Service. He also served in Texas State University President's Cabinet between 2021 and 2023 as Presidential Fellow

Prior to Texas State University, he was teaching at GWU School of Business and working as a statistician at Integrated Management Services. He has been involved in developing solutions for practical problems using tools of Operations Research and Statistics in diverse areas as financial risk management, demand management, health care fraud detection, supply chain management and manufacturing for companies including IFC (World Bank), Carlsberg and P&G.

He holds a Ph.D. in Decision Sciences from The George Washington University and a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from Bilkent University, Turkey. He is an elected member of International Statistical Institute. Please see his personal website, www.tahirekin.com for details.

Teaching Interests

 Business Statistics, Business analytics, Data mining, Stochastic Optimization, Bayesian statistics

Research Interests

 Stochastic modeling, Bayesian statistics, stochastic optimization, resource allocation, health care fraud assessment , operations and portfolio management, Bayesian data mining, simulation

Selected Scholarly/Creative Work

  • Ekin, T., Naveiro, R., Barran, A. T., & Rios Insua, D. (2024). Augmented Probability Simulation Methods for Sequential Games. European Journal of Operational Research, 306(1), 418-430.
  • Ekin, T., & Aktekin, T. (2021). Decision Making under Uncertain and Dependent System Rates in Service Systems. European Journal of Operational Research, 291(1), 335–348.
  • Zafari, B., & Ekin, T. (2019). Topic Modelling for Medical Prescription Fraud and Abuse Detection. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series C: Applied Statistics, 68, 751–769.
  • Ekin, T. (2019). Statistics and Health Care Fraud: How to Save Billions. Boca Raton, FL.: Chapman Hall/CRC Press. ASA-CRC Series on Statistical Reasoning in Science and Society. Retrieved from https://www.crcpress.com/Statistics-and-Health-Care-Fraud-How-to-Save-Billions/Ekin/p/book/9781138197428
  • Caballero, W. N., Camacho Rodriguez, J. M., Ekin, T., & Naveiro, R. (2024). Manipulating Hidden Markov Model Inferences by Corrupting Batch Data. Computers and Operations Research, 162(February 2024).

Selected Awards

  • Award / Honor Recipient: Steven R. “Steve” Gregg Excellence Endowed Professorship, Texas State University McCoy College of Business. January 1, 2022 - August 2023
  • Award / Honor Recipient: 2020 Texas State University Presidential Distinction Award in Scholar/Creative Activities, Texas State University. 2020
  • Award / Honor Recipient: 2018 Texas State University Presidential Distinction Award in Scholar/Creative Activities, Texas State University. August 2018
  • Award / Honor Recipient: International Statistical Institute Elected Member. 2019 - Present
  • Award / Honor Recipient: Defense Tech Connect Data/AI Innovation Spotlight, Defense Tech Connect. May 2022 - September 2022

Selected Grants

  • Ekin, Tahir (Principal), Tesic, Jelena (Co-Principal), Qasem, Apan Muhammad (Co-Principal), Valles Molina, Damian (Co-Principal), Summers, Lucia (Co-Principal), Hewitt, Barbara A (Supporting), Liu, Xiangping (Supporting), Chang, Carolyn T (Supporting), Mendez, Francis A (Supporting), Irvin, Jennifer A (Supporting), Resendiz, Maria D (Supporting). Expanding AI Curriculum and Infrastructure at Texas State University to Advance Interdisciplinary Research and Grow a Diverse AI Workforce, National Science Foundation, Federal, $400000. (Submitted: June 2023, Funded: January 2024 - December 2025). Grant.
  • Fulton, Lawrence V (Principal), Villagran, Melinda Morris (Co-Principal), , Bing Zhou (Co-Principal), Mendez, Francis A (Co-Principal), Ekin, Tahir (Co-Principal), Qasem, Apan Muhammad (Co-Principal), Konur, Dincer (Supporting), Alanis, Emmanuel (Supporting), Zihagh, Fereshteh (Supporting), Dong, Zhijie (Co-Principal), Shen, Xiaoxi (Supporting), De Nadai, Alessandro Stevens (Supporting), Zhu, Ye (Co-Principal), Hewitt, Barbara A (Co-Principal), Valles Molina, Damian (Supporting), White, Alexander (Supporting), Dolezel, Diane M (Supporting), Ioudina, Vera (Supporting), Islam, Tanzima Z (Supporting), Lee, Chul Ho (Supporting), Metsis, Vangelis (Supporting), Moradi, Masoud (Supporting), Gao, Ju (Supporting), Li-Jen, Lester (Supporting), Jones, Dustin (Supporting), Pham, Vung (Supporting), Holt, Melinda (Supporting), Kyung An, Min (Supporting), Islam, ABM (Supporting), Cho, Hyuk (Supporting), Liu, Quigzhoung (Supporting), Liang, Fan (Supporting), Topinka, Joseph Baar (Supporting). The Accelerating Credentials of Purpose and Value for the Texas Innovation Corridor (TIC) Consortium Grant, THECB, State, $1450000. (Submitted: November 2021, Funded: February 2022 - October 2022). Grant.
  • Ekin, Tahir. Adversarial Machine Learning for Disinformation Detection, Research Enhancement Program, Texas State University, $8000. (Submitted: October 2020, Funded: December 2020 - May 2022). Grant.
  • Rios Insua, David (Principal), Ekin, Tahir (Supporting). Adversarial Machine Learning: Methods, Computations and Applications to Malware, Fake News and Autonomous Vehicles, Private / Foundation / Corporate, $110000. (Submitted: October 2019, Funded: March 2020 - March 2022). Grant.
  • Feng, Li (Supporting), Chen, Xiao (Principal), Ekin, Tahir (Supporting), Musal, Rasim (Supporting). Enabling and Improving Data-Driven Research at Texas State University, National Science Foundation, Federal, $499896.00. (Funded: October 1, 2014 - September 30, 2017). Grant.

Selected Service Activities

Member
Texas State University Principal Investigators (PI) Council
September 2023-Present
Chair
Center for Analytics and Data Science
September 2023-Present
Other
DBA Faculty
August 2023-Present
Organizer
Texas State University/United States Air Force Summer Cadet Research Program
March 2023-Present
University Mentor
Generacion STEM: Get Future Ready
March 2023-Present