MIT's Engineering Systems Division (ESD) represents a bold educational initiative aimed at establishing engineering systems as a field of study and advancing theory, policy and practice in this domain. ESD is an interdisciplinary academic unit that spans most departments within the School of Engineering, as well as all five schools within MIT.

ESD offers a doctoral degree and five master's programs. All programs share a common, holistic approach to engineering system. ESD prepares engineers to lead in the real world, where clean answers are anomalies and challenging technical problems rarely have purely technical solutions. The division focuses not only on complex, technology-based products (automobiles, airplanes, etc.) and systems (transportation, energy, etc.), but also on related issues of managerial and societal interactions.