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The William W. George Chair
Candidates for this position must have an earned doctorate or equivalent experience, and national and international recognition in their specific discipline based on a proven record of excellence in academic and professional scholarly achievements as well as leadership and management skills. Successful candidates should have the strategic skills and vision to lead the Stewart School toward higher levels of excellence within the health field and be able to establish a successful working relationship with academic and research colleagues. Successful candidates will be expected to lead teams of researchers at the cutting edge of their fields, attract external funding, build and lead a strong research program, successfully mentor graduate students, and develop and teach undergraduate and graduate courses.
The Stewart School presently has a student body consisting of almost 1,300 undergraduates and approximately 400 graduate students, 180-200 of which are pursuing Ph.D. degrees. Currently, there are approximately 40 full-time academic faculty members. The primary disciplinary strengths represented by the School’s faculty are: modern industrial engineering, operations research, and statistics. Major methodological research concentrations include mathematical optimization, stochastic processes, and engineering statistics with prominent application domains arising in supply chain logistics, health, manufacturing, system informatics, finance, energy, natural systems, and others.
Nominations and applications will be accepted until the position is filled. Candidates should send a curriculum vitae to:
Barbara D. Boyan, Ph.D., Chair, George Chair Search Committee
Associate Dean for Research and Innovation, College of Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology
barbara.boyan@bme.gatech.edu
404-385-4108
The Georgia Institute of Technology is a unit of the University System of the State of Georgia and is an Equal Education/ Employment Opportunity Institution; applications from and nominations of women and underrepresented minorities are strongly encouraged.
The History of Health Systems at Georgia Tech
The Health Systems program at Georgia Tech was founded by Dr. Harold Smalley when he came to the Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE) from the University of Pittsburgh in 1958. With the recent growth in hospitals and number of patient beds, concern grew related to finding efficiencies to the hospital system while controlling rising costs. This need motivated pioneers in industrial engineering (IE) to apply IE principles to the hospital environment and helped build interest in the field.
At the time, Dr. Smalley was involved in research relating to hospital management engineering, efficiencies in the surgical suite, and healthcare dietary programs. He continued his innovative research at Georgia Tech and sponsored several Ph.D. students. After graduation, many of these students either went on to educate the next generation of specialists at other university IE programs, establish companies working in the hospital systems field, or take positions within hospital related organizations to analyze, design, and implement improved systems.
Dr. Smalley identified 40-50 persons across the nation that were considered to be health systems professionals (or hospital industrial engineers as they were called at that time) actively working in healthcare organizations and hospital management, and as the number grew, a need for a professional society became evident. With the help of Harold Smalley, the Hospital Management System Society (HMSS) was certified on the Georgia Tech campus with 47 charter members in November of 1961. The first meeting of the society took place with Harold Smalley serving as the Executive Director. Later HMSS affiliated with the American Hospital Association and then later became the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) in 1986. HIMSS has become the professional society of choice for most practitioners involved in hospital management engineering and healthcare information technology and now represents about 26,000 members.
Of note, one of Smalley's Ph.D. students, John R. Freeman, excelled in the field. John Freeman received his M.S. in 1964 and Ph.D. in 1967 from Georgia Tech and among several works, Smalley and Freeman published Hospital Industrial Engineering: A Guide to the Improvement of Hospital Management Systems in 1966. The book was well received and in 1968 was named IIE Book of the Year. The publication further contributed to the reputation of the program and continues to be a well-read reference today.
In the 1990's, the Health Systems program became identified as a key strategic area for growth and development at Georgia Tech and faculty worked together to develop a broader vision for the Health Systems program, establishing a network of relationships among for-profit, non-profit, and government organizations in the healthcare industry, and forging links with other Schools at Tech as well as the Woodruff Health Sciences Center at Emory University.
Georgia Tech has offered health systems degrees since 1977 and has graduated over 600 alumni in this area. The Master of Science in Health Systems degree program is currently being expanded to include a strong focus on predictive health.
In more than 40 years of evolution, the Health Systems program has grown to have three major themes: 1) Biological and Biomedical Operations Research; 2) Healthcare Delivery Operations Research; and 3) Management, and Knowledge Management and Information Technology. These themes follow the College of Engineering's major initiatives in Bioinformatics, Biomedical Engineering, Quantitative Medicine, Computational Biology, and Nanomedicine. The Georgia Tech Health Systems program now has approximately 600 alumni with approximately 80 holding bachelor degrees, 500 holding masters degrees, and 20 holding Ph.D.s.
