Systems Engineering (SE) is concerned with effective design, production, deployment, operation, maintenance, refinement, and retirement of reliable systems within cost and time constraints. Operations Research (OR) deals with the use of scientific methods in management and scientific decision making. Integration of the two disciplines lends a strong analytical component to systems engineering analysis and an overarching systems perspective that is well grounded in application to operations research analysis. We describe the educational programs in systems engineering at the undergraduate and graduate level at George Mason University, and discuss the integration of OR into the curriculum, as well as the integration of SE into the OR curriculum. We further elaborate on the integration and synergies of these two disciplines in research, and in particular in research on issues potentially impacting national or government policy.

Ariela Sofer is Professor and Chair of the Systems Engineering and Operations Research Department. She is also affiliated with the Simulation Group at the ISIS Center, Department of Radiology, at Georgetown University Medical Center. Her major areas of interest are nonlinear programming, numerical optimization, and optimization in medical applications. She is coauthor (with Stephen Nash) of the book "Linear and Nonlinear Programming," (McGraw Hill 1996, to be republished by SIAM in December 2008), and coeditor (with Eva Lee) on the Annals of Operations Research series of volumes on "Operations Research in Medicine" established in 2000. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research among other. Dr. Sofer is President of the Association of Chairs of Operations Research Departments (ACORD). She is Past Chair of the INFORMS Computing Society, has served as Secretary/Treasurer of the SIAM Special Interest Group on Optimization SIAG/OPT, and is Incoming Vice President of INFORMS for Sections and Societies. She has served as Associate Editor of the Operations Research Journal, and is currently Associate Editor for Management Science Chun-Hung Chen received his Ph.D. degree in Engineering Sciences from Harvard University and is currently a Professor of Systems Engineering & Operations Research at George Mason University. He was an Assistant Professor of Systems Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania before joining GMU in 2000. Dr. Chen has lead research projects in stochastic simulation and optimization, systems design under uncertainty, and air traffic management, which are sponsored by NSF, FAA, and NASA. Dr. Chen received the Kayamori Best Automation Paper Award from the 2003 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 1994 Eliahu I. Jury Award from Harvard University, and the 1992 MasPar Parallel Computer Challenge Award. He has served as associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, International Journal of Simulation and Process Modeling, and the Book Series on System Engineering and Operations Research for WSPC, and as the co-Editor of the 2002 Winter Simulation Conference Proceedings. Dr. Chen is a Program Co-Chair for 2007 Informs Simulation Society Workshop and the Chair of Contributed Sessions Committee for 2008 Informs Annual Meeting.