Founded in 1979, it is one of the earliest similar disciplines established in China. In 1993，Systems Science was awarded the right to confer master degree . In 1995，it became the key discipline of the former Ministry of Machinery Industry. In 2006, it won the right to confer doctoral degree. In 2008，it was included in the key discipline construction plan of Shanghai Education Commission. It was included in the First-class Major Construction Plan among Shanghai universities in 2012, the Shanghai Class III Peak Discipline in 2015 and the Shanghai High Level University Construction Discipline in 2018. In the same year, it was upgraded from a second-level doctoral degree in system analysis and integration to a first-level doctoral degree in system science, ranking the third in China in the results of the fourth round of discipline evaluation by the Ministry of Education in 2018. In October 2019, with the approval of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security of China and the National Postdoctoral Management Committee, a post-doctoral mobile station for system science was established.
The main research directions include：System Analysis, Optimization and Control Science, System Biology, Network Computing and Parallel Computing, Parallel Complex Network Algorithms, Complex System Theory, etc.
At present, there are 21 postdoctoral cooperative tutors in the post-doctoral mobile station.