Haileab Hilafu, PhD

I am an Associate Professor and the James & Connie Vavalides Faculty Fellow in Business Analytics & Statistics at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK). I joined UTK in 2014 and was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2020.

Research. I study how to improve decision-making in complex systems, with an emphasis on healthcare delivery. My work examines how operational choices shape outcomes, resource use, and patient experience. I draw on causal inference, econometrics, and statistical and machine learning methods to produce evidence that is both rigorous and actionable.

Publications. My research has appeared in leading statistics and operations journals, including Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series B (JRSS-B), Management Science (MS), Manufacturing & Service Operations Management (MSOM), Production and Operations Management (POM), Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics (JCGS), and Statistica Sinica.

Teaching. I teach undergraduate and graduate courses on statistical methods, including applied regression methods and computational statistics, and machine learning methods.

Background. I earned a BS in Statistics (minor in Computer Science) from the University of Asmara, and MS and PhD in Statistics from the University of Georgia.

Contact: hhilafu@utk.edu [UTK Faculty Page]

Google Scholar Page

PUBLICATIONS (Peer Reviewed)

18. Ackett, R., Hilafu, H., Gelfand, I., Fidan, E., and Saha, D. (2026) Predicting when and why N2O hot moments occur across global agroecosystems with a generalizable, low-input machine learning model. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology. Forthcoming.

17. Akturk, S., Hilafu, H., and Letizia, P. (2026) Linking Firm-Generated Content in Social Media to Sales and Returns. Management Science. Forthcoming.

16. Ackett, R., Hilafu, H., Gelfand, I, and Saha, D. (2025) Statistical Identification of Nitrous Oxide Hot Moments and Their Significance across Global Agroecosystems. Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences. 130, e2025JG008953.

15. Hilafu, H., Letizia, P. and Roma, P. (2025) Product Customization and Returns: The Moderating Role of National Culture. Production and Operations Management. 34(5) 886–903.

14. Jia, H., Hilafu, H. and Bichescu, B. (2024) Hospital-physician Integration and Cardiac Surgery Outcomes: A U-shaped Relationship? Production and Operations Management. 33(3) 645–662.

13. Bichescu, B. and Hilafu, H. (2023) Effects of Hospital-Acquired Conditions on Readmission Risk: The Mediating Role of Length of Stay. Manufacturing and Service Operations Management. 25(4):1603–1621.

12. Rabby, YW., Li, Y. and Hilafu, H. (2023) An objective absence data sampling method for landslide susceptibility mapping. Scientific Reports. 13, 1740.

11. Hilafu, H. and Safo, S. (2022) Sparse Sliced Inverse Regression for High Dimensional Data Analysis. BMC Bioinformatics. 23(1): 1–19.

10. Lee, C.E. and Hilafu, H. (2022) Quantile Martingale Difference Divergence for Dimension Reduction. Statistica Sinica. 32: 1-23.

9. Nayak, S., Bhandari, H., Sams, C., Sykes, V., Hilafu, H., Dalid, D., Senseman, S. and Pantalone, V. (2020) Genetic Variation for Biomass Yield and Predicted Genetic Gain in Lowland Switchgrass “Kanlow”. Agronomy. 10: 1845.

8. Hilafu, H., Safo, S., and Haine, L. (2020) Sparse reduced-rank regression for integrating omics data. BMC Bioinformatics. 21(1): 1–17. Matlab Codes

7. Hibbing, P.R., LaMunion, S.R., Hilafu, H., and Crouter, S.E. (2020) Evaluating the Performance of Bout Detection Algorithms for Wearable Sensors: The Transition Pairing Method. Journal for the Measurement of Physical Behaviour. Sep;3(3):219–227.

6. Wu, W. , Hilafu, H. and Xue, Y. (2019) Simultaneous estimation for semi-parametric multi-index models. Journal of Statistical Computation and Simulation. 89: 2354–2372.

5. Hilafu, H. Wu, W. (2017) Partial Projective Resampling Method for Dimension Reduction: With Applications in Partially Linear Models. Computational Statistics and Data Analysis. 109: 1–14.

4. Hilafu, H. and Yin, X. (2017) Sufficient Dimension Reduction and Variable Selection for Correlated High Dimensional Data. Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics. 26(1): 26–34.

3. Hilafu, H. (2017) Random Sliced Inverse Regression. Communication in Statistics - Simulation and Computation. 46(5): 3516–3526.

2. Yin, X. and Hilafu, H. (2015) Sequential Sufficient Dimension Reduction for Large p Small n Problems. Journal of Royal Statistical Society Series B. 77: 879–892.

1. Hilafu, H. and Yin, X. (2013) Sufficient Dimension Reduction for Multivariate Regression with Categorical Predictors. Computational Statistics and Data Analysis. 63: 139–147.

TEACHING

University of Tennessee

BZAN 540: Applied Regression Analysis for Business.

BZAN 535: Statistical Methods for Business.

BZAN 615: Statistical Inference

STAT 577: Data Mining Methods and Applications

BAS 474: Data Mining and Business Analytics

STAT 201: Introduction to Statistics.

University of Georgia

STAT 4210: Statistical Methods.

STAT 2000: Introduction to Statistics.

AWARDS AND HONORS

James & Connie Vavalides Faculty Fellow. 2024 - Present.
HCB Advanced Supply Chain Collaborative (ASCC) Award, University of Tennessee. 2022.
MSBA Faculty Outstanding Commitment to Students Award, University of Tennessee. 2018.
Best Senior Student, Department of Statistics, University of Georgia. 2014.
Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award, University of Georgia. 2012.
Best Beginning Theoretical Student, Department of Statistics, University of Georgia. 2010.
Graduated with Distinction, University of Asmara, Asmara, Eritrea. 2007.