June 6, 2016: Invited Speaker Seminar: Reinforcing Resilience of Modern Cyber-Physical Systems: A New Challenge Calling for Innovative Techniques and Tools

Dr. Cen Nan
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich

Monday, June 1, 2016 at 2:15 pm
Room EV003.309

Abstract

Today’s societies rely on a number of modern cyber-physical systems,especially critical infrastructures (e.g., electric power systems, industrial control systems, etc). These systems have always been “complicated”. However, in recent years, they have demonstrated complex behaviors, e.g., high dynamic and non-linear characteristics, growing interconnectedness due to close coupling, etc. Furthermore, there have been many factors driving transition of more intelligent and integrated cyber-physical systems, resulting in the increase of their complexities and uncertainties, e.g., pervasive use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), and increasing influences of social elements (e.g., human interactions). As a consequence, maintaining secure and resilient operation of these systems seems more and more challenging.

This talk presents current research activities mainly targeting to tackle these challenges using various techniques, which focus on modeling and measuring performance of modern cyber-physical systems, developing mitigating actions against onset and propagation of the failures, and identifying operating conditions that strengthen their security and resilience.

Biography

Dr. Cen Nan received his B.Eng. in Electrical and Computer Engineering in 2005 and his M.Eng. in Mechanical Engineering in 2007 from Memorial University of Newfoundland. From 2007 to 2008, Cen worked as a field engineer at Schlumberger Canada. In 2012, he received his Ph.D. degree in Mechanical and Process Engineering from Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich). As a research associate at Reliability & Risk Engineering Lab, ETH Zurich, his research activities mainly focus on the development of advanced modeling techniques to assess complex behaviors of a variety of cyber-physical systems, approaches to strengthen security and resilience of these systems, and methods to investigate impacts of human performance on socio-technical systems.