Welcome to

Systems and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory





The endless frontier of intelligence should be facts and love, no matter for human, machine or nature systems.     

 -Tony Shi

Tony Zhongshun Shi, PhD

Assistant Professor, Industrial and Systems Engineering

Director, Systems and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL) 

Affiliated Faculty, Machine Tool Research Center and Institute of Advanced Materials and Manufacturing

Office: 516 John D. Tickle Building Phone: 865-974-7654  

University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996

E-mail: tony.shi@utk.edu 


The mission of Systems and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL) is to establish a human-AI teaming paradigm for the research and education of systems science and engineering to accelerate scientific discovery and engineering innovation. Our approach is to perform fundamental research in systems theory and human-informed machine learning as a pathway to human-AI teaming for modeling, simulation, design, control, optimization and life-cycle management of complex systems in manufacturing and energy. 

SAIL Vision

Research Interests:

Biography: Dr. Tony Shi is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, and directs the Systems and AI Laboratory (SAIL) at the University of Tennessee Knoxville (UTK) since 2020. He is an Affiliated Faculty of Machine Tool Research Center in the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Biomedical Engineering, and Institute of Advanced Materials and Manufacturing at UTK. Prior to joining UTK, he was a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from 2017 to 2019.  He received his B.S. in Pure and Applied Mathematics from China University of Geosciences (Beijing) in 2011 and his Ph.D. in Management Science and Engineering from Peking University in 2017. Dr. Shi is a member of SME, IEEE, ASME, IISE, INFORMS and iSoGO