Professor
Education
- Ph.D. Statistics (2005), Carnegie Mellon University
- M.S. Statistics (2002), Carnegie Mellon University
- M.S. Stochastic Processes and Theoretical Statistics (2000), University of Bucharest
- B.S. Mathematics (1998), University of Bucharest
Expertise
- Statistics
- Data Mining
- Health Analytics
- Health Systems
- Enterprise Transformation
About
Nicoleta Serban is a Professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech. She earned a B.S. in Mathematics and an M.S. in Theoretical Statistics and Stochastic Processes from the University of Bucharest, followed by a Ph.D. in Statistics from Carnegie Mellon University.
Prof. Serban served as Editor for Physical Sciences, Engineering, and the Environment for the Annals of Applied Statistics from 2014 to 2021. She has actively contributed to the profession through participation in multiple National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and Institute of Medicine (IOM) workshops, as well as NAE Frontiers of Engineering and Science symposia. Her service includes multi-year participation in two state-level committees: the Georgia All-Payer Claims Database Advisory Committee and the Georgia Behavioral Health Reform & Innovation Commission.
She has also reviewed proposals for major funding agencies, including the National Institutes of Health, the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, and the National Science Foundation. To date, Prof. Serban has published more than 85 peer-reviewed journal articles, co-authored a book with Dr. William B. Rouse titled Understanding and Managing the Complexity of Healthcare, and authored Healthcare System Access: Measurement, Inference, and Intervention.
Research
Prof. Serban’s research program focuses on data-driven analytics, integrating statistical modeling, optimization, and computational methods to address complex, real-world problems. A central theme of her work is health analytics, where she leverages massive and sensitive datasets, such as Medicaid claims for over 100 million enrollees yearly over more than 10 years, to inform healthcare delivery and policy. This research has advanced understanding of access, utilization, and outcomes in areas such as preventive oral health, pediatric asthma, mental health, and cost-effectiveness of interventions.
Methodologically, Prof. Serban’s contributions span high-dimensional statistical modeling, distributed optimization, and computational innovations for large-scale decision systems. These developments are motivated by applied challenges in healthcare and have been disseminated through leading journals in statistics, health services, and operations research.
Looking forward, Prof. Serban aims to expand the integration of machine learning and simulation with optimization and statistical inference to improve decision-making in healthcare systems, particularly for underserved populations. She plans to scale these approaches nationally, creating platforms that translate data into actionable insights for policy makers and practitioners.
Teaching
Prof. Serban’s teaching philosophy for both undergraduate and graduate education is grounded in the principle that students should develop a broad perspective on how analytics can influence the world. In her courses, she emphasizes experiential learning through real-world data analysis projects. These projects go beyond well-crafted examples, challenging students to address authentic problems drawn from diverse fields of study.
Over the years, Prof. Serban has designed and taught multiple courses that reflect this philosophy. Notably, she developed two graduate-level courses, Time Series Analysis and Regression Analysis, for Georgia Tech’s Online Master of Analytics program. Teaching online requires careful attention to student engagement and comprehension. To achieve this, she structured her courses to alternate between conceptual discussions and applied examples, illustrating models through real data analyses. All examples are provided via GitHub repositories and implemented in integrated Jupyter Notebooks across two coding platforms. These materials also serve as the foundation for the on-campus versions of the same courses in the Master of Analytics program.
Prof. Serban’s commitment to mentoring is equally strong. To date, she has advised 17 Ph.D. students who have graduated and is currently advising three more. She has also collaborated with many Ph.D. and M.S. students on individual projects, resulting in several publications. Her research platform fosters growth and training for undergraduate students as well, many of whom have published in peer-reviewed journals. She has created a collaborative environment where undergraduates, graduate students, and postdoctoral researchers work together to tackle relevant applied problems. To date, she has mentored over 50 undergraduate students, with five of them pursuing doctoral degrees and many others continuing to M.S. programs.
Awards and Honors
- Best Paper Award in the Public Sector 2014
- Selected to attend the National Academy of Engineering, Japan-America Frontiers of Engineering Symposium 2014
- Selected to attend the National Academy of Engineering Frontiers of Engineering Symposium 2011
- NSF CAREER Award 2010
- Class of 1969 Teaching Fellow, CETL, Georgia Institute of Technology 2008
- David Byar Young Investigator Award, ASA Biometrics Section 2004
Representative Publications
2024-2025 Selected Publications
Xie, Y., Garcia, G. G., Song, E., & Serban, N. (2025). Evaluating access to paediatric psychosocial services: a discrete event simulation approach under uncertainty. Journal of Simulation, 1–24.
Liu, W., Xie, Y., Vinson, S. Yu, J.5, Serban, N. (2005) Prevalence of diagnosed mental health conditions among US children with public and commercial insurance. BMC Public Health 25, 4050.
Junghwan Lee, Simin Ma, Nicoleta Serban, Shihao Yang (2025) Accurate treatment effect estimation using inverse probability of treatment weighting with deep learning, JAMIA Open, Volume 8, Issue 2.
Xie Y, Harati P, Rajbhandari-Thapa J, Serban N. (2025) Evaluating access to psychosocial services for the Medicaid-insured children in Georgia. BMC Public Health. 25(1):244.
Serban N, Ma S, Yu J, Anderson A, Pospichel K, Solipuram SR, Tomar SL (2024) Dental care access for children in the United States. J Public Health Dent. Dec;84(4):351-361.
Simin Ma, Amin Dehghanian, Gian-Gabriel Garcia, and Nicoleta Serban (2025) Learning Hidden Markov Models with Structured Transition Dynamics. INFORMS Journal on Computing. 37, no. 3: 531-556.
Kim, D., Cuffe, S.P., Naylor, M.W., Keskinocak, P., Serban, N. (2024) Adherence to Clinical Practice Guidelines and FDA Approved Psychotropic Medication to Treat Medicaid-insured Children with ADHD. Psychiatric Services. 75(11):1151-1156.
Girodano, N.A., Zhao, G.4., Kalicheti, M.5, Schenker, M.L., Wimberly, Y., Rice, C.W., Serban, N. (2024) Opioid Utilization After Trauma Hospitalization in the Medicaid-insured Adults, Frontiers in Public Health, vol 12.
Dehaghnian, A., Xie, Y., Serban, N. (2024) Identifying Socially Optimal Equilibria using Combinatorial Properties of Nash Equilibria in Bimatrix Games, INFORMS J. of Computing. vol 36 (5): 1147-1358.