SDM students conduct thesis projects under the guidance of faculty in the MIT Sloan School of Management and the School of Engineering. To ensure real-world applicability, these projects are often done in consultation with supervisors in organizations with which the students are involved.
The SDM program is designed to teach principles, concepts, processes and tools for system design and management. The SDM thesis provides an opportunity to interpret the knowledge acquired through the SDM core and other courses and apply that knowledge to a problem of substantial size and significance. By working on a problem in which both technical and management issues are important and interdependent, SDM students gain an opportunity to demonstrate true intellectual leadership.
SDM students who already have ties to companies or organizations generally link their thesis work to a product, process or other activity at their workplace. Often it is directly related to challenges they are addressing in their current jobs. Other synergies occur via ties made through the program or through faculty members and their research.
Students who are sponsored by employers have been able to show immediate value to their organizations based on thesis work. The challenge for the SDM student is to define the work and achieve the desired results.
The following are examples of SDM theses:
