SystemDesign@Illinois

Engineering System Design Lab

Welcome to the Engineering System Design Lab at the Univeristy of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, directed by Professor James Allison. Our mission is to play a leading role in the transformation of engineering system design.

The complexity of engineered systems has risen dramatically in recent decades, but conventional system design methods have failed to keep pace, resulting in regular cost and time overruns. Interactions between system components contribute to complexity, and at the ESDL we study advanced design methods that can fully account for system interactions and capitalize on synergistic relationships to improve system performance and reduce complexity of the design process. We are particularly interested in ways better system design can have positive impact on humanity, such as improving energy efficiency and energy sustainability.

Please visit our research and publications pages to learn more about our work. If you have more questions, are interested in joining the ESDL, or are considering collaboration or sponsoring our research, please contact Professor Allison.

News

  • Congratulations to Dan Herber who graduated with his B.S. in General Engineering on 12/17/11.
  • A new special topics course (GE 598 - Dynamic System Modeling and Design) will be offered Spring 2012. It will address the interfaces between modeling, simulation, control, design, and optimization aspects of dynamic system design.
  • Welcome to Dan Herber and Allen Kaitharath who joined the ESDL in October 2011 as undergraduate researchers.