Jun Yan, PhD

Professional Experience

• University Research Chair (tier 2), 2023-present
• Graduate Program Director (thesis-based), 2023-24
• Associate Professor, 2022-present
• Assistant Professor, 2018-22

Research interests

• Computational intelligence, security, and resilience
• Agentic/autonomous AI - as tools, targets, and threats
• Smart grids, smart vehicles, smart buildings, and smart cities
• Cyber-physical systems, operational technologies, and industrial control systems

Current Appointments

• Concordia University Research Chair (Tier 2) in Artificial Intelligence in Cyber Security and Resilience
• Concordia-MCN Co-chaire de recherche sur la cybersécurité et la résilience des réseaux de l’administration publique
• Co-Director, NSF EuReCa Global Center on Equitable, Resilient, and Clean Energy for Grid-Interactive Communities
• Co-Director, Digital Twins Hub, Concordia University

Education

• Ph.D. (2017), Electrical Engineering, University of Rhode Island, USA (with Excellence in Doctoral Research)
• M.Sc. (2013), Electrical Engineering, University of Rhode Island, USA 
• B.Eng. (2011), Information & Communication Engineering, Zhejiang University, China 

• Most cited paper (as of Feb. 2022) of IET Cyber-Physical Systems: Theory & Applications.
  
• Top-50 cited papers published within the last 5 years on IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, and IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics.
• Best Paper Award, IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC).
• Best Student Paper Award, IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence (WCCI).
• Best Readings on "Communications & Information Systems Security - Cyber Attacks" of IEEE Communication Society (2013). 
• Front-cover paper on IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security (TIFS), vol. 8, no. 4, April 2013.
• Excellence in Doctoral Research Award, University of Rhode Island, Ph.D. Class of 2018 (sole recipient). 
• Best Reviewers, IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid (2016). 

I have authored or co-authored more than 100 peer-reviewed papers in the areas of computational intelligence, security, and resilience with applications for smart grids, smart cities, and other smart critical infrastructures. 

According to Google Scholar, three of our papers are among the top-50 cited papers published on reputable journals (IEEE TIFS, IEEE TIE, IEEE TMECH, IET CPS) between 2018-24. I have also received best paper awards from IEEE WCCI/IJCNN and IEEE ICC, and best reviewer award from IEEE TSG.

A selection of my publication highlights can be found below. For a complete list of publications, please see my homepage or my Google Scholar.

Publication highlights

Surveys:

• "Cybersecurity of Distributed Energy Resource Systems in the Smart Grid: A survey," Applied Energy (2025)

• "Cybersecurity of Smart Inverters in the Smart Grid: A Survey," IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics (2023)

• "Cyber‐Physical Attacks and Defences in the Smart Grid: A Survey," IET Cyber‐Physical Systems: Theory & Applications (2016)

Technical papers (2020-24, selected):

Security & Resilience

• "Adversarial Artificial Intelligence in Blind False Data Injection in Smart Grid AC State Estimation," IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics (2024)

• "Modeling and Assessment of Cyber Attacks Targeting Converter-Driven Stability of Power Grids With PMSG-Based Wind Farms," IEEE Transactions on Power Systems (2024)

• "Reinforcement Learning-Based Adaptive Feature Boosting for Smart Grid Intrusion Detection," IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid (2023)

• "Model-Measurement Data Integrity Attacks," IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid (2023)

• "Prevention and Detection of Coordinated False Data Injection Attacks on Integrated Power and Gas Systems," IEEE Transactions on Power Systems (2023)

• "Attack-Resilient Optimal PMU Placement via Reinforcement Learning Guided Tree Search in Smart Grids," IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security (2022)

• "Dynamic Reduced-Round TLS Extension for Secure and Energy-Saving Communication of IoT Devices," IEEE Internet of Things Journal (2022)

• "A Highly Discriminative Detector Against False Data Injection Attacks in AC State Estimation," IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid (2022)

• "A Cyber Attack Mitigation Scheme for Series Compensated DFIG-Based Wind Parks," IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid (2021)

• "Detection and Mitigation of Cyber Attacks on Voltage Stability Monitoring of Smart Grids", IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid (2020)

Learning & Optimization

• "Less or More From Teacher: Exploiting Trilateral Geometry For Knowledge Distillation," International Conference on Learning Representations (2024)

• "Early Wildfire Detection and Distance Estimation Using Aerial Visible-Infrared Images," IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics (2024)

• "Graph Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Inverter-Based Active Voltage Control," IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid (2024)

• "A Novel Distributed PV Data Virtual Collection with Continuous-Binary Denoising Auto-Encoders," IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid (2024)

• "Multi-agent reinforcement mechanism design for dynamic pricing-based demand response in charging network," International Journal of Electrical Power & Energy Systems (2023)

• "A virtual data collection model of distributed PVs considering spatio-temporal coupling and affine optimization reference," IEEE Transactions on Power Systems (2022)

• "A Simultaneous Multi-Round Auction Design for Scheduling Multiple Charges of Battery Electric Vehicles on Highways," IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems (2022)

• "Self-Learning Robust Control Synthesis and Trajectory Tracking of Uncertain Dynamics," IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics (2022)

• "Adaptive Event-triggered Control for Unknown Second-order Nonlinear Multiagent Systems," IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics (2020)

• "Event-Triggered Control for a Class of Nonlinear Multiagent Systems with Directed Graph," IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics: Systems (2020)

• "An Projection-based Regret Theory Method for Multi-Attribute Decision Making under Interval Type-2 Fuzzy Set Environment," Information Sciences (2020)

• "Optimal Scheduling of EV Charging at a Solar Power-Based Charging Station," IEEE Systems Journal (2020)

• "Demand-Aware Provisioning of Electric Vehicles Fast Charging Infrastructure," IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology (2020)

• "Charging Demand Analysis Framework for Electric Vehicles Considering the Bounded Rationality Behavior of Users," International Journal of Electrical Power & Energy Systems (2020)

Technical papers (pre-2020, selected):

• "Bidding for Preferred Timing: An Auction Design for Electric Vehicle Charging Station Scheduling," IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems (2019)

• "Multiscale Convolutional Neural Networks for Fault Diagnosis of Wind Turbine Gearbox," IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics (2019)

• "Functional Nonlinear Model Predictive Control Based on Adaptive Dynamic Programming," IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics (2018)

• "Wind Turbine Fault Detection using a Denoising Autoencoder with Temporal Information," IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics (2018)

• "SDE: A Novel Clustering Framework Based on Sparsity-Density Entropy," IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering (2017)

• "Q-learning-based Vulnerability Analysis of Smart Grid against Sequential Topology Attacks," IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security (2017)

• "Detection of False Data Attacks in Smart Grid with Supervised Learning," IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence/ International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (2016)

• "A Bi-Layer Optimization Based Temporal and Spatial Scheduling for Large-Scale Electric Vehicles," Applied Energy (2016)

• "Intelligent Load Frequency Controller Using GrADP for Island Smart Grid with Electric Vehicles and Renewable Resources," Neurocomputing (2016)

• "Joint Substation-Transmission Line Vulnerability Assessment against the Smart Grid," IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security (2015)

• "Cascading Failure Analysis With DC Power Flow Model and Transient Stability Analysis," IEEE Transactions on Power Systems (2015)

• INSE 6640 - Smart Grids and Control System Security
• INSE 6630 - Recent Developments in Information Systems Security
  (Topic: Recent Developments of AI/ML in Information Systems Security)
• COEN 231 - Introduction to Discrete Mathematics

• Chair, IEEE PES Task Force on Big Data and Analytics for Security and Resilience of Power Systems (2023-present)
• Associate Editor, Energy Conversion and Economics (2023-present)
• Associate Editor, Complex & Intelligent Systems (2022-present)
• Assistant to the Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems (2016-2017)

I have multiple open positions for postdoctoral fellows, Ph.D. students, Master's students, and undergraduate summer internships.
If you are interested in researching cutting edge solutions in cyber security, machine learning, digital twinning, energy resilience, anomaly management, and multi-agent systems, please check my homepage for more information.
Interested applicants are encouraged to email me about current openings and scholarship opportunities, with the following subject line:
"Interest in [PhD/MS/PDF] position - [Your name] - [Expected start term, e.g., Fall 2025]"
Please enclose a copy of your most recent CV and transcript in the inquiry.