Program in Industrial and Management Engineering School of Engineering Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Industrial and Systems Engineering at Rensselaer

The Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISE) offers degree programs at the bachelor's, master's and doctoral levels. ISE was formed in 1987 with the goal of developing and deploying mathematical, statistical, and computational models to better understand and support engineering, managerial, operational, and physical processes. In the past ten years, over 600 students have completed their degrees through the department. "US News and World Report" has consistently ranked ISE's graduate program among the top 25 in the nation.

ISE employs methods of mathematical programming, queuing theory, computational optimization, decision analysis, applied statistics, database systems, soft computing, and discrete event simulation for solving problems related to the design, planning, and operation of complex systems where intelligent coordination is necessary to achieve optimal performance. It is distinct from management and economics in its use of an engineering approach to designing and analyzing enterprise processes to optimize performance. It is distinct from computer science in its focus on the design of data and knowledge systems as the organizational nerve center where operations and enterprise systems are integrated.

Master's Degrees in the Industrial and Systems Engineering Department at RPI

The department offers Master of Science (MS) and Master of Engineering (MEng) degrees in Industrial and Management Engineering (IME), open to students with strong science, mathematics, or engineering backgrounds. Both degrees require 30 credit hours of academic workload. The MS includes three to six credits of thesis work. The MEng degree does not require a thesis, and includes an optional three to six credit project, often entailing close collaboration with industry partners. All applicants to the IME master's programs must take the Graduate Record Exam (GRE).

Students develop a plan of study through consultation with an academic adviser. The plan of study must contain a minimum of 24 credits (which includes 2 prerequisites), taken from a list of approved courses in the master's program. The plan of study must also include a four-course application-focused concentration area (e.g., manufacturing logistics, optimization, complex systems modeling). Senior-level undergraduate courses may be included, but at least 15 credits must be at the graduate level. All IME students are encouraged to seek out a thesis or project in one of the research initiatives of the ISE department as part of their graduate study. Examples of courses available within the program include "Ethics of Modeling for Industrial and Systems Engineering," "Stochastic Models of Supply Chains," "Computational Intelligence," "Human Performance Modeling," "Theory of Scheduling," and "Agent Based Simulation."

The Master of Science (MS) in Decision Sciences and Engineering Systems is designed to educate engineers who can develop, implement, and integrate systems comprised of machines, material, information, and technology. Students take core courses in chemical process design, cognitive engineering, machine and computational learning, fuzzy logic, and control and communications. Students each complete 30 semester hours of classes, including a research rotation and 6 to 9 hours of independent study leading to an original thesis.

Although the majority of applicants hold bachelor's degrees in engineering disciplines, this is not a requirement of the program.

Doctoral Study in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Rensselaer

ISE's doctoral program prepares students to pursue advanced work -- in academia, industry or government -- within the ISE core intellectual area. The program provides foundational training in industrial and systems engineering, including the development and application of advanced methods in mathematics, computation and system engineering. This work is accompanied by further study and research in an area of specialization determined through close consultation with the student's faculty advisor. Graduates of the ISE doctoral program receive a PhD degree in Decision Sciences and Engineering Systems, and have gone on to careers at leading universities, government organizations, private labs, and other industrial positions.

Research Leadership in Industrial and Systems Engineering

Research in the ISE department is producing ground-breaking results in adaptive supply chains, infrastructure sustainability and resilience, and areas such as self-reconfigurable power grids; distributed sensor systems; computational intelligence for computer-aided drug design; simulation tools for modeling the spread of infectious diseases, and text-mining techniques in bioinformatics.

Research in the area of Adaptive Supply Chains develops methods for efficient deployment of finite resources in order to assemble, transport, sustain, and distribute people and goods. This work is therefore directed towards facilitating fulfillment of demand associated with economic commerce, national defense, disaster response, and humanitarian aid. The focus is on efficient and integrated coupling of supply with distribution network resources from a total integrated systems perspective. The functional scope spans operations, procurement, materials management, storage, transport, routing, warehousing, dispatching, delivery, and service. Its contextual scope spans production, transportation, military, health, maritime, and communications systems. The research is expanding the theoretical frameworks for understanding, modeling, and simulating interdependent supply chains under short-term disruptive conditions as well as their adaptability over the system life cycle.

ISE research in Infrastructure Sustainability and Reliability focuses on the development of methods, data and technology for ensuring continuous delivery of services provided by key infrastructures, including power, telecommunications, water and transportation. With ongoing changes throughout the world -- including those related to population growth, environmental and technological hazards, and technology development -- this is an area of pressing concern in both the developed and the developing world. This work is multidisciplinary in nature, using expertise ranging from engineering design to human performance modeling to decision support, and involving both laboratory and field work, often in collaboration with infrastructure providers and relevant public sector agencies.

Renowned Faculty

The accomplishments and interests of the ISE faculty span a broad range of areas within the field of Industrial and Systems Engineering. Their work has been published in top professional journals and conferences. They have served as principal investigators on research funded through grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Dept. of Homeland Security, U.S. Army, DARPA, US Dept. of Transportation, US Federal Aviation Administration and other sources, and from various private and foundation sources. The faculty includes an IEEE fellow (Wallace) and senior members (Hsu, Mendonca), a Lifetime Associate of the National Academies (Grabowski), as well as editors and associate editors for leading journals (e.g., Naval Research Logistics, IIE Transactions, OMEGA, various IEEE Transactions), and three winners of the NSF CAREER award (Chan, Ryan, Mendonca).

A Top Research Institution

Founded in 1824 as the nation's first technological university, Rensselaer remains one of the top engineering schools and consistently achieves a ranking among the top 50 universities in the nation by "US News and World Report."

Rensselaer alumni have been integral to national and technological development, from the first alumni who helped build the nation by constructing canals, roads, bridges, and skyscrapers, to more recent alumni who are developing innovative research and solutions for the next century.

Located 9 miles from Albany, New York, in the historic Hudson River Valley, Rensselaer maintains a beautiful 200 acre campus with state-of-the-art computer and engineering facilities.

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• Degrees Offered
• Major Degree Levels Offered
• Master of Science (MS)
  Master of Engineering (M Eng)

• Degrees Awarded
• Master's Degrees 8
• Doctoral Degrees Not reported
• First Professional Degrees Not reported
• Other Advanced Degrees Not reported
• * Shows the number of degrees awarded for the last academic year that data was reported.

• Earning Your Degree
• Part-time study available? Yes
• Evening/weekend programs available? No
• Distance learning programs available? No
• Terminal master's degree available? Not reported

• Degree Requirements
• Master's Degrees Required for some
• Doctoral Degrees Not reported
• First Professional Degrees Not reported
• Other Advanced Degrees Not reported

• Acceptance Rate
• Applied59
• Accepted4
• Acceptance Rate6%
• Enrolled3
• Applying
• Application Fee - Domestic $75
• Application Fee - International $75
• Electronic applications accepted? Yes
• Applications processed on a rolling basis? Yes
• Application Deadlines
• Type Domestic International Priority Date
• Fall deadline January 1st January 1st Yes
• Winter deadline Not Reported Not Reported Not Reported
• Spring deadline August 15th August 15th Not Reported
• Entrance Requirements
• Master's DegreesGRE General Test (minimum score 550 verbal)
• Doctoral's DegreesNot Reported
• First-Professional's DegreesNot Reported
• Other Advanced DegreesNot Reported
• International DegreesTOEFL required, 570 paper based

• Tuition & Fees
• In-state tuition *$39,600
• Out-of-state tuition *$39,600
• International student tuitionNot Reported
• * Tuition for full-time graduate student per academic year
• Fees
• Per-academic year fees$1,896.00
• Per-term feesNot Reported
• One-time feeNot Reported
• * Fees for full-time graduate students
• Financial Support
• Financial award applicants must submitNot Reported
• Application deadlines for financial awardsJanuary 1
• Types of financial support availableCareer or Field-Related Internships, Institutionally-sponsored Loans

• Gender
• Total Graduate Students6
• Female Percentage17%
• Male Percentage83%
• Participation
• Total Graduate Students6
• Part-time Percentage17%
• Full-time Percentage83%
• Ethnicity
• Hispanic / Latino0%
• Black / African American0%
• White / Caucasian75%
• American Indian / Alaskan Native0%
• Asian25%
• Native Hawaiian / Other Pacific Islander0%
• Two or more races0%
• Unknown0%

• Faculty Breakout
• Total Faculty12
• Full-time Percentage100%
• Part-time Percentage0%
• Female Percentage17%
• Male Percentage83%

• Existing Research
• Focus of faculty researchDecision support systems, simulation and modeling, statistical methods/computing, operations research, supply chain logistics
• Externally sponsored research expenditures last year$1,300,000