Brunel Lecture Series on Complex Systems
Engineering Systems Division

Lecture: Engineering Engineering Systems

by Thomas L. Magnanti
Institute Professor
Dean, MIT School of Engineering

Click here to view lecture poster (.pdf).
Click here to view MIT World video of this lecture.

About the Lecture:

As illustrated by the National Academy of Engineering’s list of great engineering achievements of the 20th Century, many of the most remarkable and important engineering accomplishments of the past have been large complex technical systems. What intellectual bases and professional skills are required for the engineering of such systems? How does the answer to this question affect the design of educational programs in engineering systems or approaches to the engineering of complex technical systems?

In this talk, Dean Magnanti will raise some issues related to these questions, contrasting engineering systems with other fields and drawing, in part, on the design and development of MIT’s Leaders for Manufacturing and System Design and Management programs.

About the Speaker:

Thomas Magnanti is Dean of Engineering and one of fourteen Institute Professors at MIT. He has devoted much of his professional career to education that combines engineering and management and to teaching and research in applied and theoretical aspects of large-scale optimization. He has received numerous educational and research awards and currently serves on several corporate and university boards. As Dean, he has focused on educational innovation, industrial and international partnerships, technical-based entrepreneurship, diversity, and innovation in emerging domains such as bioengineering, tiny technologies, information engineering, and engineering systems. He is a founding co-director of both the Leaders for Manufacturing and the System Design and Management Programs.

About the Series:

THE BRUNEL LECTURE SERIES ON COMPLEX SYSTEMS was made possible by funds assembled and underwritten by Frank P. Davidson, convener of the Channel Tunnel Study Group (1957). It was this group's design, accomplished by agreement with Bechtel Corporation, Brown & Root, Inc. and Morrison-Knudsen Company, Inc. in 1959, that formed the basis of the subsea railway link now in service between England and France.

Mr. Davidson is a retired Senior Research Associate at MIT. From 1970-1996, he was Chairman of the System Dynamics Steering Committee, Sloan School of Management, and Coordinator of the Macro-Engineering Research Group at MIT's School of Engineering. He co-edited, with C. Lawrence Meador, Macro-Engineering: Global Infrastructure Solutions, subtitled Massachusetts Institute of Technology Brunel Lectures 1983-1992. With Ernst G. Frankel and C. Lawrence Maedor, he co-edited Macro-Engineering, subtitled MIT Brunel Lectures on Global Infrastructure. These volumes, published by Ellis Horwood and Horwood Publishing Limited in 1992 and 1997, respectively, appeared in Chichester, England, as did Macro-Problems and World Projects, subtitled Essays in Honor of Frank Davidson, which appeared in 1998, on the occasion of Mr. Davidsons retirement and 80th birthday. The latter volume was edited by MIT Professor Emeritus Ernst G. Frankel and by Uwe Kitzinger, CBE, former president of Templeton College, Oxford, and now a Visiting Scholar at Harvard.

Brunel Lectures 2001 – Present:

Educating Engineers for 2020 and Beyond (2006)
by Dr. Charles M. Vest
President Emeritus and Professor of Mechanical Engineering

The 21st Century is about Engineering, Systems, and Society (2005)
by Dr. A. Richard Newton
Dean of the College of Engineering at University of California at Berkeley; Roy W. Carlson Professor of Engineering; Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

Engineering Engineering Systems (2004)
by Thomas L. Magnanti
Institute Professor
Dean, MIT School of Engineering

The Columbia Tragedy: System-Level Issues for Engineering (2003)
by Sheila Widnall
Member, Columbia Accident Investigation Board
Member, National Women's Hall of Fame
Institute Professor, Professor of Aeronautics, Astronautics, and Engineering Systems, Engineering Systems Division, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Living with Catastrophic Terrorism: Can Science and Technology Make the U.S. Safer? (2002)
by Lewis M. Branscomb
Co-chair, Committee on Science and Technology for Countering Terrorism, National Research Council and Professor Emeritus, Public Policy and Corporate Management, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

Simple Systems and Other Myths (2001)
by Norman R. Augustine
Former President, CEO, and Chairman and Current Chairman, Executive Committee, Lockheed Martin Corporation