Johns Hopkins Systems Institute

The Johns Hopkins Systems Institute

In April of 2011 a major new research initiative, the Johns Hopkins Systems Institute, was launched at Johns Hopkins University (JHU). This interdisciplinary research facility, based in JHU’s Whiting School of Engineering, will include faculty from across the university.

The Systems Institute will take a multidisciplinary approach to re-engineering entire systems of national importance, including medicine, health care delivery, network-enabled systems, information security, national infrastructure, and education. In addition to engineering faculty, the institute will tap into the expertise of researchers from the university’s three health professions schools, Medicine, Public Health, and Nursing; from the schools of Arts and Sciences, Business and Education; and from JHU’s Applied Physics Laboratory, already one of the nation’s leading centers of systems engineering.

The new institute’s eventual home will be in Malone Hall, a 56,000 square-foot, interdisciplinary research facility on which construction is scheduled to begin in 2012.

There are three major components of System Institute activities:

Research. The primary role of the Institute will be to serve as the focal point of inter-campus collaborations on systems research.  Seed funding will be used to provide proof of concept for novel ideas and proposal development. Such seed funding will be used to position the SI to be successful for future competitions.

Education. The SI will seek to develop new graduate programs in systems research. These programs include certificates and minors which would supplement existing degree programs in WSE as well as in the other academic divisions of the University. As the research programs in the SI become established, Master's and eventually a PhD program in Systems will be pursued both in the Homewood and East Baltimore campuses.

Systems Practice. This component of the SI is to allow interested faculty and staff to participate in the applications of existing systems technology and methods for solving practical problems. The source of such problems would be industrial affiliates, faculty and staff, and other interested parties within and outside of Johns Hopkins who need systems expertise to solve technical problems in their research and development activities.