February 7, 2017: Invited Speaker Seminar: Cyber-Physical Security for the Attack-Resilient Smart Grid

Mr. Jun Yan, Ph.D. Candidate
University of Rhode Island

Tuesday, February 7, 2017 at 10:45 am
Room EV003.309

Abstract

The smart grid holds both promises and perils. The integration of information and power systems provides more reliable, available, and efficient energy through intelligent monitoring, control, and communication technologies. But what makes the grid smarter also make it more vulnerable. The interconnection of billions of heterogeneous, distributed, and interactive devices not only creates sophisticated interdependencies and vulnerabilities but also exposes them to growing attack threats as demonstrated in the cyber-attack on Ukraine electric grid. As power grid attack is no longer a question of if, but when, the smart grid requires significant research on both fundamental understanding of cyber-physical vulnerabilities and innovative end-to-end solutions to ensure the security of energy and numerous dependent sectors.

This talk will explore the research frontier of cyber-physical security towards a smart yet secure energy grid. Specifically, we will first review major challenges for existing cyber and physical security methods to address complex smart grid vulnerabilities through the example of cascading blackouts. A reflection on critical systems and processes in the development of blackouts will lead us to the discovery of intelligent attacks coordinated across spatial-temporal domains. We will further evaluate the impact of the attack-induced blackouts and speculate on promising solutions to improve attack-resilience with self-adaptive and self-healing systems. Finally, this talk will discuss important research challenges and opportunities in this strategic area with extensive applications in critical infrastructures and cyber-physical systems.

Biography

Jun Yan is a Ph.D. candidate in Electrical Engineering from the Department of Electrical, Computer, and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Rhode Island, USA. He received the B.Eng. Degree in Information and Communication Engineering from Zhejiang University and the M.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Rhode Island. His research interests include smart grid security, cyber-physical systems, computational intelligence, deep learning, and intelligence control & optimization.

Jun is the recipient of the Best Student Paper Award of International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (2016) and the co-recipient of the Best Paper Award of International Conference on Communications (2014). His honorable mentions include a front-cover highlighted paper in IEEE Transactions Information Forensics and Security and the Best Readings of IEEE Communication Society. He has published in research frontiers of cyber-physical security, power systems, and computational intelligence with 30 peer-reviewed articles, and has served as the General Secretary of IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence (2014) and the Assistant to the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems (2016-present).