Welcome to the University of Tennessee’s Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISE). Our department is on the rise from all perspectives! Undergraduate and graduate students are well-trained and placed. Research is growing at a fast pace, receiving lots of competitive funding from various funding agencies, publishing papers in top journals, and making impacts from the region to around the globe. More importantly, for 76 years, the department has been such a great family-like community in which everyone feels welcome and included exhibiting the Volunteer Spirit!

Students are the central part of our department. We provide an exemplary education experience to all students through our state-of-the-state curriculum, a high percentage of co-ops and internships, active student organizations, multiple study-abroad programs, numerous undergraduate research opportunities, and industry-sponsored senior design projects. The program strives to meet the ever-increasing demand for industrial engineering graduates, the largest among all engineering disciplines in the state and the nation as a whole [1,2].

Our annual research expenditures hit a record $3.67M in the academic year 2022-2023. Our faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates are doing world-class research, making impacts on manufacturing, healthcare, transportation, environment, and other systems, with funding from the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy, Department of Defense, Department of Transportation, and NIH amongst many others. The department has a strong collaboration with Oak Ridge National Lab, CNS/Y-12, the State of Tennessee, and the City of Knoxville.

Go ISE! Go Vols!

Mingzhou Jin
John D. Tickle Professor and Department Head
Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering