Faculty Profile for Dr. Tahir Ekin

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