Bill Rouse is a research professor in the McCourt School of Public Policy and senior fellow in the office of the senior vice president for research, both at Georgetown University; professor emeritus and former chair of the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology; and principal at Curis Meditor, a firm focused on the health of people, processes, organizations, and society. 

His research focuses on understanding and managing complex public-private systems such as healthcare delivery, higher education, transportation, and national security, with emphasis on mathematical and computational modeling of these systems for the purpose of policy design and analysis. 

Dr. Rouse has written numerous articles, book chapters, and books, including most recently Failure Management (Oxford, 2020), Computing Possible Futures (Oxford, 2019), and Universities as Complex Enterprises (Wiley, 2016). He has also edited or coedited a number of books, including Perspectives on Complex Global Challenges (Wiley, 2016), Engineering the System of Healthcare Delivery (IOS Press, 2010), The Economics of Human Systems Integration (Wiley, 2010), Enterprise Transformation: Understanding and Enabling Fundamental Change (Wiley, 2006), and the best-selling Handbook of Systems Engineering and Management (Wiley, 1999, 2009).

Among many advisory roles, he has served as chair of the Committee on Human Factors (now Board on Human Systems Integration) of the National Academies, and as a member of the advisory committee for the Academies’ Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education, US Air Force Scientific Advisory Board, and DoD Senior Advisory Group on Modeling and Simulation. He has been designated a lifetime national associate of the National Research Council and National Academies.

Dr. Rouse is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, International Council on Systems Engineering, Institute for Operations Research and Management Science, and Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.

He received his BS in mechanical engineering from the University of Rhode Island, and his SM and PhD, both in systems engineering, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.