Bose, Mitra, Sanders, and Liu win Siebel Energy Institute grants

The Siebel Energy Institute is a global consortium for energy research. It funds cooperative and innovative research grants in data analysis, including statistical analysis, and machine learning to accelerate advancements in the safety, security, reliability, efficiency, and environmental integrity of modern energy systems. 

"We are very proud of the work done in computer science and engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and these professors will continue to be at the forefront of energy research," said Rashid Bashir, Dean Designate, ECE ILLINOIS professor, and Abel Bliss Professor of Engineering.

No institution received more grants than Illinois this year. 

Subhonmesh Bose, assistant professor of ECE ILLINOIS, received an award for his proposal "Privacy by Design for Smart Energy and Transportation." This project will provide a framework for privacy-preserving optimization for energy and transportation systems. 

Max Liu, a research scientist from the Information Trust Institute, won for his proposal "Secure Cloud-Based Applications for Enhancing Power Grid Resilience." This project aims to create cloud-based applications that will unify attractive features of autonomy and security while promoting a resilient, efficient, and sustainable smart grid.

ECE ILLINOIS professor Sayan Mitra received an award for his proposal "A Formal Verification and Synthesis Tool for Safety Critical Power Grid Infrastructures and Cyber-Physical Systems." This research will tackle the difficulties of verifying and designing controllers for smart power grids by combining serval technologies that drastically lower the complexity but provide formal guarantees of safety and security.

William H Sanders, the interim director of the Discovery Partners Institute, Donald Biggar Willet Professor in Engineering, and ECE ILLINOIS professor, won for his proposal "The Design and Implementation of a Distributed Denial of Service-Tolerant Network Architecture for the Future CPS Cloud." His goal is to design a resilient networking infrastructure that withstands DDoS attacks and provides continuous service throughout. 

All the grants given were for $50,000. 

Read the original article on the College of Engineering website.