Division of Systems Engineering
Systems engineering cuts across the traditional engineering departmental structure as a discipline that studies systems—be they electrical, mechanical, chemical, biological, or involving business processes and logistics—through information, decision, and control sciences. Systems engineers are equipped with the unique skills to adapt their knowledge and expertise to diverse application domains, including automation, robotics, and control; communications and networking; computational biology; information sciences; production; service systems supply chains; energy systems; and more.
The Systems Engineering program at BU provides a unique graduate curriculum for students with these interests as well as extensive research opportunities through the interdisciplinary Center for Information & Systems Engineering and its industry connections.
Systems Engineering is a cross-disciplinary program, offered by the College of Engineering in cooperation with faculty from the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences and the Questrom School of Business. The program integrates courses from engineering, computer science, mathematics, and management.
For undergraduates, the program offers a systems engineering minor, which can be used to supplement studies in another major field of study and provide students with a foundation in the discipline. Required and elective courses cover a range of topics such as probability theory, signals and systems, applied algorithms, operations research, and supply chain engineering.
The program offers the Master of Engineering, Master of Science, and Doctor of Philosophy for graduate students. Through coursework, collaborative training projects, and dissertation research, students learn to apply analytical, computational and mathematical methods to all aspects of modern technology that require sophisticated modeling and intelligent information processing for design, management, and control. Students receive instruction in communications and ethics as appropriate to the social impact and implications of systems engineering.
Students in the program have access to these units’ state-of-the-art computational and experimental facilities, and participate in innovative research in collaboration with faculty from other departments as well as the Center for Information & Systems Engineering. Research areas explored include automation, robotics, and control; communications and networking; computational biology; information sciences; and production, service, and energy systems.
