Engineering Management & Systems Engineering | School of Engineering & Applied Science

An interdisciplinary, problem-solving department

"We are at the forefront of addressing complex societal challenges through systems thinking. Addressing major issues such as climate change, public health, trustworthiness in artificial intelligence, critical infrastructure systems, innovation, privacy, and connectivity requires a systems approach. Working alongside policymakers and technology leaders, we are dedicated to creating and implementing complex adaptive solutions that improve decision-making and shape the world around us."

Ekundayo Shittu
Department Chair

Explore our cutting-edge interdisciplinary educational and research programs

Prospective Students

Developing skills for impact: We are one of the oldest and largest programs of our kind in the United States, offering undergraduate and graduate programs that combine engineering, management, business analytics and technology. We give you the skills necessary to deploy technology for impact.

Faculty and Research

The world is our lab: Faculty and students in the department work with partners throughout GW, across DC, and around the globe to conduct research that covers a wide array of sectors and topics. Meet our faculty and learn about our focus research areas.

News

Professor Helveston Published in Science Policy Forum on Revitalizing the US Automotive Industry

October 30, 2025

EMSE Professor John Helveston published an article in Science discussing how strategic collaboration with China can revitalize the U.S. automotive industry.

Professor Helveston and Pingfan Hu at posit::conf(2025)

Building a Platform to Make Survey Research More Accessible

October 30, 2025

EMSE Professor John Helveston worked with students to build an open-source survey platform, making it easier for researchers across the world to generate surveys.

Twitter's Efforts to Combat COVID-19 Misinformation Backfire

October 16, 2025

A new study reveals Twitter's design may have amplified vaccine misinformation, demonstrating how top-down approaches can backfire and the need to rethink the overall design of social media platforms.

GW to Co-Lead a New $20 million NSF AI Institute

The George Washington University is co-leading a multi-institutional effort supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) that will develop new artificial intelligence (AI) technologies designed to promote trust and mitigate risks, while simultaneously empowering and educating the public. The NSF Institute for Trustworthy AI in Law & Society (TRAILS) unites specialists in AI and machine learning with systems engineers, social scientists, legal scholars, educators, and public policy experts. The multidisciplinary team will work with impacted communities, private industry, and the federal government to determine how to evaluate trust in AI, how to develop technical solutions and processes for AI that can be trusted, and which policy models best create and sustain trust. David Broniatowski, an associate professor of engineering management and systems engineering at GW, is the lead principal investigator of TRAILS at GW.

The new institute is expected to transform the practice of AI by encouraging new innovations that foreground ethics, human rights, and input and feedback from communities whose voices have previously been marginalized. The NSF, in collaboration with government agencies and private sector leaders, has now invested close to half a billion dollars in the AI institutes ecosystem—an investment that expands a collaborative AI research network into almost every U.S. state.

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Alumna Anngienetta Johnson's Distinguished Career

After decades of pioneering work at NASA, Anngienetta Johnson, M.S. ‘92, D.Sc ’03, didn’t want to stop making her mark on the world. As she neared retirement, her drive to take on new challenges and help others led her to GW’s School of Engineering & Applied Science (GW Engineering), where she earned her doctorate in engineering management and laid the foundation for her next mission: leading large-scale humanitarian efforts across the U.S.

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GW to Co-Lead a New $20 million NSF AI Institute

Alumna Anngienetta Johnson's Distinguished Career