The International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE), defines systems engineering as:

"...an interdisciplinary approach and means to enable the realization of successful systems. It focuses on defining customer needs and required functionality early in the development cycle, documenting requirements, then proceeding with design synthesis and system validation while considering the complete problem."

SEAri research focuses primarily on contributing to advanced systems engineering as opposed to traditional systems engineering: 

SYSTEMS ENGINEERING (Traditional)

Systems engineering is the process of selecting and synthesizing
the application of the appropriate scientific and technical
knowledge in order to translate system requirements into
system design. (Chase)

SYSTEMS ENGINEERING (Advanced)

Systems engineering is a branch of engineering that
concentrates on design and application of the whole as
distinct from the parts… looking at the problem in its entirety,
taking into account all the facets and variables and relating
the social to the technical aspects. (Ramo)