Dr Dinesh Verma, associate dean of executive education and outreach at the Charles V Schaefer, Junior School of Engineering at the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey, was appointed dean of its recently launched School of Systems and Enterprises.

The SSE was established as the fourth distinct school within the SIT, in recognition of the pivotal role played by complex systems in the 21st century.

'Given society's inevitable march toward conceiving systems and enterprises of ever-increasing complexity, the School of Systems and Enterprises is the next logical progression for Stevens as one of the leading technological universities in the world,' said Stevens' President Harold J Raveche.

'This school will complement our three existing schools with its emphasis on systems integration and enterprise management and optimization.'

Immediately after his appointment, Dr Verma, who is also a professor in systems engineering at Stevens, announced a leadership team and organizational roles within the new school, among other things.

Explaining the strategic intent of the SSE, he said, 'We plan to develop a graduate education enterprise within the discipline of complex systems and enterprises that is the premier educational program of its type in the world.'

The Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management, including the System Design and Operational Effectiveness graduate program, were founded in 2000.

Dr Verma initiated the SDOE program with the goal of engaging the corporate sector in high-level graduate education and research in advanced systems.

'This led to a remarkable success story in higher education,' said Dr John Farr,   founding director of SEEM.

From the first 20 students in spring 2001, sponsored by Lockheed Martin and the Office of the US Secretary of Defense, undergraduate enrollments now exceed 120 and graduate enrollments exceeded 300 in the current academic year. Growth in the SDOE program has averaged 35 percent per year for six years, and the program now offers modules in Europe , India and the Far East.

Dr Verma had a doctorate and MS degree in industrial and systems engineering from Virginia Tech. During his six years at Stevens he has successfully proposed research and academic programs worth more than $20 million. He also serves as scientific advisor to the director of the Embedded Systems Institute in Eindhoven, Holland.

He served as technical director at Lockheed Martin Undersea Systems, in Manassas, Virginia, and research scientist at Virginia Tech, where he managed the University's Systems Engineering Design Laboratory.

He also serves as a consultant to numerous companies, including some Fortune 500 firms.

He has authored more than 85 technical papers, book reviews, technical monographs, and co-authored two textbooks: Maintainability: A Key to Effective Serviceability and Maintenance Management (Wiley, 1995), and Economic Decision Analysis (Prentice Hall, 1998). He is a co-editor of a forthcoming textbook on Space Systems Engineering.

He has received two patents and has another pending in the areas of life-cycle costing and fuzzy logic techniques for evaluating design concepts.

Dr Verma is a fellow of the International Council on Systems Engineering, a senior member of The International Society of Logistics, and was elected to Sigma Xi, the honorary research society of America.