Tracking Real-time Anomalies in Power Systems (TRAPS)

The researchers participating in this grant include Farshad Khorrami and Ramesh Karri, Professors of Electrical and Computer Engineering and member and director — respectively — of the NYU Center for Cybersecurity; and Research Scientist Prashanth Krishnamurthy.

A project to develop methods of securing the U.S. power grid from hackers, led by NYU Tandon researchers at the NYU Center for Cybersecurity, is one of six university teams receiving a portion of $12 million from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), supporting research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) of novel cybersecurity technologies to help the U.S. power grid survive and recover quickly from cyberattacks.

The Tandon team received $1.94 million for the project from the DOE fund, with matching support from NYU bringing the total to around $2.8 million, to develop Tracking Real-time Anomalies in Power Systems (TRAPS) to detect and localize anomalies in power grid cyber-physical systems. Collaborators include SRI International, the New York Power Authority, and Consolidated Edison. TRAPS will correlate time series measurements from electrical signals, embedded computing devices, and network communications to detect anomalies using semantic mismatches between measurements, allowing it to perform cross-domain real-time integrity verification.

Administered by the DOE's Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER), the strategic project aims to advance anomaly detection, artificial intelligence and machine learning, and physics-based analytics to strengthen the security of next-generation energy systems. These systems include components placed in substations to detect cyber intrusions more quickly and automatically block access to control functions.   

The program aligns with the DOE’s larger goal of bolstering the security and resiliency of the power grid toward advancing President Biden’s goal of a 100% clean electrical grid by 2035 and net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.