Introduction

  • The Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area is one of the most economically vibrant regions in China and a talent-gathering region for advanced manufacturing industries in the world. The Greater Bay Area undertakes the historical mission to upgrade industry and generate technological innovations. Manufacturing systems, social service systems, transportation networks, environmental systems, and logistics of the Greater Bay Area have become extremely complex with the development and deployment of networks, computing technologies, and artificial intelligence technologies. As the center of the west coast of the Greater Bay Area, Macao aims to make important contributions to the economic development of the Greater Bay Area.

    Focusing on scientific and technological innovation and talent training and carrying out research on optimization and intelligentization of complex systems, the Macao Institute of System Engineering (MISE) was established in June 2014. As a scientific research institution affiliated to Macau University of Science and Technology, MISE focuses on the frontiers of theory and technological innovation by gathering and training multi-disciplinary talents to serve social and economic development. MISE is becoming an internationally renowned base of system engineering research and talent training. Its main research areas include:

    • Intelligent control systems andintelligent technology foundation

    • Intelligent manufacturing

    • Smart cities

    • Artificialintelligence and water ecology

    MISE has gathered distinguished researchers in the above fields, including four highly cited researchers and five IEEE Fellows. It has extensive collaborations with prestigious research institutions in more than 20 countries and regions, including the United States, Canada, France, Italy, Germany, and mainland China. The Collaborative Laboratory for Intelligent Science and Systems has been jointly established with the State Key Laboratory for Complex System Management and Control affiliated to the Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences. The institute undertakes various research projects as supported by the Macau Science and Technology Development Fund (FDCT), National Natural Science Foundation and industrial firms. MISE has a good number of faculty and post-doctoral researchers. It offers the Doctor of Philosophy Degree program in Intelligent Science and Systems (DISS) and the Master of Science Degree program in Intelligent Technology (MII). It annually enrolls more than 20 doctoral students and more than 40 master students.

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Director’s Message      

澳門系統工程研究所所長伍乃騏教授

Nowadays we live in a world that is composed of a wide variety of systems, including, for example, various production systems, transportation systems, power supply and distribution systems, computer and communication networks, banks and financial systems, and ecological systems. These systems form an indispensable environment on which our life is dependent. Actually, the human society is exactly a huge social network system with communicating individuals and communities owing to social and business relationships. All these systems are not independent of each other, but instead intrinsically related and may affect each other. For instance, production systems, including industrial and agriculture production processes, provide necessities to support our material life, while, on the other hand, they inevitably consume natural resources and energy, which, if not well managed and controlled, can yield enormous impacts on ecological systems and may pollute our environment. The polluted environment harms our health. For instance, the development of automobile industry significantly facilitates commuters and travelers. However, a deluge of vehicles in an urban area usually results in road congestion and causes air pollution. All in all, the systems surrounding us are mutually dependent and influence each other. Furthermore, each system itself can contain many sub-systems that are also mutually related and impacting each other. Consequently, the operation and management of these systems are extremely complicated and challenging.

Systems engineering, originally proposed by E. C. Molina, Bell Lab, and  A. K. Erlang, Copenhagen Telephone Company, in the early 20th century, is a subject that explores the dynamics of the aforementioned systems by using scientific and systematic procedures and recipes to develop efficient and effective approaches to their control and operations. Specifically, it attempts to analyze and reveal the inherent interactions between systems and their sub-systems from a system’s viewpoint. Systems engineering has undergone for a long time and made tremendous contributions to the development of our society. Over the past decades, the extensive applications of information technologies witnessed the exuberant blooming of computer-integrated systems with increasing complexity in their structure and scale. In addition, the intramural states of a system evolve rapidly, leading to the dramatic burgeoning of new issues to be addressed. To deal with the new systems, issues, and concomitant technical barriers, novel theories and technologies are overwhelmingly imperative. 

The mission of Macau Institute of Systems Engineering is to advance the Systems Engineering theory, methods and technologies in order to cope with the new problems and new issues. We intend to apply the advanced system theories and technologies, including control theory, optimization, mathematics, and statistics, to model increasingly complex systems, analyze the relationship among systems, and reveal their evolution mechanism. Thus we can formulate the most effective operation and control methodologies and technologies and make significant contributions to the sustainable development of our society.

Director of Macao Institute of System Engineering

Prof. Wu NaiQi