Speaker: Gelli Ravikumar, Postdoctoral Researcher at the PowerCyber R&D Lab in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Iowa State University
Title: Cyber-Physical Security for Power Grids – Data-Driven Models, Algorithms, Architectures, and Testbeds
Abstract: The modern power grid is a sophisticated Cyber-Physical System (CPS) that forms the lifeline of our society. The grid’s reliable, secure, and resilient operation is of paramount importance to national security and economic well-being. CPS security for the power grid has been a key research area in the emerging smart grid technologies. This presentation will start with a short introduction to CPS Smart Grid concepts followed by a broad overview of cyberattacks in the grid context and birds-eye-view of my current research projects in this area. With the recent deployment of the first wide-area control system in North America that uses real-time PMU feedback, the wide-area damping control system receives practical importance including cybersecurity and attack-resiliency because of the wide-spread cyber threats on the power grid. In this context, I will discuss one of my recent technology developed for the Machine Learning-based attack-resilient wide-area damping control system. I will show how I leveraged the Physics-based power grid characteristics in Machine Learning to increase the accuracy of detecting anomalies in real-time for an attack-resilient cyber-physical wide-area control system.
Bio: Gelli Ravikumar is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the PowerCyber R&D Lab in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Iowa State University, USA. Before joining ISU, he was a Postdoctoral researcher for one year at New Mexico State University, USA. He received a Ph.D. degree in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India, in 2016. His research expertise is in the areas of Power system control and analysis, System stability, AI and Machine Learning, Attack-resilient control algorithms, and Cyber-physical system security for the smart grid. He has co-authored 25+ research publications and has given invited talks and tutorials at power utilities on the subjects of synchrophasors, information interoperability, and cybersecurity. He is active in 3 research grant projects sponsored from NSF and DOE research grants. He has contributed to 10+ research grant-writing proposals for funding including the Department of Energy (DOE), National Science Foundation (NSF), and Power Systems Engineering Research Center (PSERC).
Seminar Host: Ashfaq Khokhar