The Department of Management Science and Engineering is one of the most famous and historical department in Harbin Institute of Technology. In 1978, it founded the first research direction of management information systems (MIS) in China and began to recruit graduate students in 1980. In 1986, it was accredited to confer master’s degree and established the earliest research center of MIS. In 1987, it was accredited to confer doctor’s degree and established the first major of MIS. In 1998, the name of the major was altered to “Information Management and Information Systems”. It has been recognized as an important major by Heilongjiang Province since 2006, and has been recognized as one of the earliest important majors by Ministry of Industry and Information Technology since 2012. In 1994, it set up the post-doctoral research center in Management Science and Engineering; In 2001, its Management Science and Engineering discipline was ranked a National Priority Discipline, which is among one of the 18 key disciplines in Harbin Institute of Technology, and are supported by the “985 project” and “211 project.”

The department currently employs 29 full-time faculty members. There are 9 professors, 1 Researcher, 18 associate professors, 1 lecturer, It has 3 Yangtze River Scholar professor, 12 Ph.D. supervisors, 15 master student supervisors, and 6 staffs supported by Program for New Century Excellent Talents. In addition, the department has 2 chief international academic adviser, 4 overseas contract professors. Some notable academics include: Professor Tiyun Huang, founder of the discipline, the book Management Information Systems edited by Prof. Huang is the most used textbook in Chinese universities; Professor Yunquan Hu, founder of the discipline, the pioneer of operations research and teaching, the series text books of Operations Research edited by Prof. Hu has been used by more than 100 Chinese universities; Professor Yijun Li, Yangtze River Scholar professor. He is a member of Chinese National Disciplinary Appraisal Group in Management Science and Engineering, and the vice-director of Management Engineering teaching committee of Ministry of Education in China; Professor Qiang Ye, the dean of school of management of HIT, supported by the Program for New Century Excellent Talents and National Natural Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars. Professor Ye is now the editorial board member of MISQ, JECR and ECRA.

The research of our staff has been supported by governmental funding agencies in China as well as corporations. Faculty members in the department conduct diverse research in the area of management information systems, e-commerce and business intelligence in the context of Big data, e-health, internet financing, aerospace and defense systems engineering, supply chain management, system simulation and application, enterprise information systems, decision support systems, knowledge management, operations management, and statistics modeling among others. The department offers a variety of research platforms, including the Information Management and Systems Science Lab, the E-Business Lab, the Enterprise Resource Planning Lab and the behavioral Science Lab, etc.

The department has long been committed to establish cooperation in research and student program with international universities and research institutes. Since its early days in China that produced talent in the discipline for society, a trail of alumni of the department are working worldwide, including government agencies, corporations, and universities among others.