Researchers at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering have developed a rechargeable zinc-ion battery that uses low-cost materials and a simplified water-based assembly process to make safer reliable batteries. The approach could reshape how utility-level energy storage and home energy systems are designed and manufactured.

The work, led by Professor Petru Andrei of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and doctoral student Peng Wang, was published in ACS Omega.

Meeting the demand for improved battery technology

Demand for reliable, safe and eco-friendly batteries continues to grow across industries, from consumer electronics to electric vehicles to medical devices. Lithium-ion batteries remain the industry standard, but their safety concerns — overheating and flammability chief among them — along with their environmental footprint have pushed researchers to explore alternatives.

Aqueous zinc-ion batteries, known as AZIBs, offer a cost-effective and environmentally friendlier option. Their widespread use has been held back by technical hurdles: short-circuiting caused by dendrite growth, complex manufacturing and limited long-term stability.

Dendrites are tiny metal structures that form inside batteries during charging. When they grow unchecked, they can pierce internal barriers and cause short circuits or outright failure.

How it works: solving the dendrite problem

To address those challenges, the FAMU-FSU team developed a new battery assembly approach. They integrated a specialized hydrogel electrolyte with electrodeposition of manganese dioxide, meaning a critical battery component grows directly inside the cell during assembly rather than being manufactured separately and inserted.

“We want to improve how aqueous zinc-ion batteries are made,” Andrei said. Everything is processed in water, with a nonflammable hydrogel that stabilizes and suppresses dendrites. These are tiny metal structures that can cause battery failure, making the assembly much simpler and significantly safer.”

The hydrogel is composed of poly(vinyl alcohol) and aramid nanofibers derived from Kevlar, the same material used in body armor. Together they form a flexible, durable network that retains the battery’s electrolyte and physically blocks the formation of zinc dendrites. The battery charges and discharges rapidly over hundreds of cycles with minimal capacity loss, without the hazardous solvents or energy-intensive drying steps that conventional manufacturing requires.

A simpler manufacturing process

Traditional battery manufacturing relies on slurry mixing: Powdered electrode materials are combined with solvents to form a thick paste, coated onto metal foils and then dried. It is time-intensive and requires precise equipment and quality controls at every stage.

The FAMU-FSU approach eliminates that step entirely.

“This concept can be used in production in the future,” Andrei said. “Because our process is fully water-based and doesn’t require slurry mixing and drying steps, it can fit naturally into a manufacturing line.”

Removing that step reduces equipment needs and simplifies quality controls, offering a meaningful advantage for any manufacturer looking to scale production of next-generation energy storage.

Why it matters: grid-scale energy storage

The batteries maintained capacity after more than 900 rapid charge-and-discharge cycles and performed reliably under demanding conditions.

Those results have real-world implications. Grid-scale energy storage — the infrastructure that buffers power from solar and wind sources — demands batteries that are stable, long-lasting and inexpensive to produce at scale. Home energy backup systems face similar requirements.

“The future of this technology is safe, low-cost energy storage,” Andrei said. “I see it being used in applications where safety, cost and long cycle life matter more than high energy density, such as grid storage, home energy systems and large backup power. These are situations where batteries need to last a long time and be very reliable, even if they aren’t the most powerful. Our technology is designed for stability and safety, making it well-suited for these critical uses.”

The advances could also benefit flexible electronics and wearable medical devices, where battery flammability is a particular concern.

The research was supported by Florida State University.

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Developed through a partnership with industry, the research will help  improve efficiency and resiliency for technology used in next-generation electric motors and other applications.

When current flows through a wire, it doesn’t always have a perfect path. Tiny defects within the wire mean current must travel a more circuitous route, a problem for engineers and manufacturers seeking reliable equipment. 

Through a partnership with industry, researchers at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering and Florida State University’s Center for Advanced Power Systems and the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory have supported the development of a design that uses multiple strands of superconducting tape to create a cable, minimizing the chance of failure from defective spots within a wire. When current encounters a defect in one wire, it jumps to a neighboring wire to continue moving. 

The research, which was published in Superconductor Science and Technology, helps to solve engineering and manufacturing challenges for manufacturers and could lead to more efficient and less expensive wires for electric motors and many other superconducting coil applications. 

“By partnering with Advanced Conductor Technologies, not only are we supporting the development of a new, innovative idea, but we also have a way to transition the technology quickly to applications,” said co-author Sastry Pamidi, interim director of the Center for Advanced Power Systems and chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “The research we’re doing directly translates into low-cost superconducting wire and mitigates equipment failure due to defects in the conductor.”

HOW IT WORKS
Through previous work with Colorado-based Advanced Conductor Technologies, or ACT, Pamidi’s team supported the development of a superconducting wire technology called Conductor on Round Core (CORC®) wire, which served as a foundation for ready-to-use superconducting coils that rely on helium gas for cooling instead of liquid nitrogen. The change gives engineers more design flexibility because helium remains in a gas phase over a wider range of temperatures than other media. 

CORC wires are made by winding bands of multiple superconducting tapes in a spiral shape. Instead of soldering the tapes together, they rely on pressure between the tapes to let electricity flow from one to another. This keeps the wire flexible and strong under tension. 

If defects are distributed randomly through a wire, they’re unlikely to cluster in one location in a cable. In a process called current sharing, current jumps from one wire to another when it encounters a defect. That allows manufacturers to use more of the wire they make, minimizing waste and lowering costs. 

CREATING THROUGH COLLABORATION
The research is the latest outcome of the partnership between researchers at FSU and private industry. Previous work brought together CAPS faculty with ACT. This project also included New York-based company SuperPower Inc., a manufacturer of second-generation high-temperature superconducting tape. 

The FSU researchers first collaborated with ACT through a U.S. Small Business Administration program called Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer, or SBIR/STTR. 

Funding for this latest project came from the U.S. Department of Energy instead of the SBIR/STTR program, but the connections built during earlier work helped build trust and a working relationship that has paid dividends in published research and engineering designs that are used today. 

“We are not just doing research for the sake of doing research,” Pamidi said. “It has an impact. Our work helps companies develop products. Without us, those companies cannot do this work, because we are contributing scientific expertise and advanced facilities for research that are directly benefiting companies and helping them to advance their manufacturing processes.” 

The collaboration brings benefits to all parties that would otherwise be unavailable. Participating companies can take advantage of engineering expertise and top-notch facilities to help solve difficult engineering problems. Florida State collaborators get access to funding and the opportunity to work on interesting problems that have an immediate impact for their partners. 

“The expertise and scientific infrastructure of Florida State University have been vital in the development of superconducting CORC® cables and wires at Advanced Conductor Technologies since they were first introduced as a commercial product by my company in 2014,” said Danko van der Laan, president and chief executive officer of Advanced Conductor Technologies. “Our collaboration with FSU, which has been ongoing for about a decade and a half, has allowed us to solve many technical challenges that would have prevented our cables from becoming a successful commercial solution for applications such as fusion, particle accelerators and power applications.” 

WHY IT MATTERS
Superconducting wires have numerous applications: electrical motors and generators, electric airplanes, ships, medical equipment, fusion power plants, artificial intelligence data centers, power transmission lines, high-energy physics experimental facilities and more. Anywhere engineers want electricity to move, superconducting wires can move it without losses, allowing for more efficient machines and magnet systems, including magnetic levitation used in high-speed trains. 

But making superconducting wires is challenging. The manufacturing process inevitably introduces some defects in the wire. The traditional solution to that problem has been to solder multiple pieces together to create a long length of defect-free wire. Combining wires into cables, like in the solution optimized by the partnership of FSU, ACT and SuperPower, is a way to get the benefits of superconducting wires at a lower cost. 

“We are very happy to see the outcome from this work,” said Yifei Zhang, vice president of research and development at SuperPower. “Thanks to the unique structure of CORC and the way the cables in this work were fabricated, the project successfully demonstrated that the coils made with the VIC wires, wires that were considered defective, achieved equivalent performance as the coils that were made with almost perfect wires. This result can change the way the wire production yield is calculated, which will lead to a significant reduction in wire cost.” 

The earliest superconductors needed extremely low temperatures, close to absolute zero, to function. Pamidi and other CAPS researchers are developing new technologies for high-temperature superconducting wires, which can carry current without resistance at temperatures as high as 77 kelvins, which makes possible simpler and more affordable applications for this technology. 

SUPPORT AND COLLABORATORS
Co-authors on this research were Jeremy Weiss, Danko van der Laan, Chul Kim, Reed Teyber, Kyle Radcliff, Virginia Phifer, Daniel Davis, Yifei Zhang and Lance Cooley. The work was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, which is supported by the National Science Foundation.

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With recent hires in the College of Medicine and the College of Social Sciences and Public Policy, Florida State University has doubled the number of its faculty who are members of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, a prestigious organization that unites leading researchers from around the country.

“Florida State University is a leading research university and an excellent place to grow an academic career,” said FSU President Richard McCullough. “Our ability to attract these esteemed faculty members is a testament to that commitment.”

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, or NASEM, are private, nonprofit institutions that provide expert advice on some of the most pressing challenges facing the nation and world. Their work helps shape sound policies, inform public opinion and advance the pursuit of science, engineering and medicine.

The university now counts 12 NASEM members among its faculty, an increase from six in 2024.

“These National Academy members want to be a part of FSU because the administration, faculty and students value their contributions and the opportunity to collaborate,” said Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Jim Clark.

This year, FSU added National Academy members A. Stewart Fotheringham to the Department of Geography, Regan Bailey to the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Social Medicine, and Patrick Stover to the Department of Biomedical Sciences.

Fotheringham is the Krafft Professor of Spatial Data Science and the director of the Spatial Data Science Center. His research focuses on the analysis of spatial data sets using statistical, mathematical and computational methods, which he applies to topics such as health data, crime patterns, migration and more.

Bailey is a professor in the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Social Medicine and co-director of the Institute for Connecting Nutrition and Health. She is a nutritional epidemiologist whose research is focused on promoting health through nutrition across the lifespan. Her research program uses best practices for characterizing nutritional status, improvement of dietary assessment and chronic disease risk using a life course approach.

Stover is a professor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences and co-director of the Institute for Connecting Nutrition and Health. He is known for his research on folate metabolism and its crucial role in human health. His work has helped uncover how folate, a B-vitamin, affects critical biological processes such as DNA synthesis, repair and methylation, and it has shown how folate deficiencies could lead to severe health consequences such as neuropathies, cancer and cardiovascular diseases.

The number of National Academy members on the faculty is an important factor for institutional membership in the Association of American Universities, or AAU, a group of leading research universities.

National Academy members at FSU are working on game-changing research across campus:

National Academy of Sciences
Greg Boebinger, Department of Physics, College of Arts and Sciences; director emeritus of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory
Laura Greene, Department of Physics, College of Arts and Sciences; chief scientist at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory
Steven Stanley, Department of Biological Science, College of Arts and Sciences
A. Stewart Fotheringham, Department of Geography, College of Social Sciences and Public Policy
Patrick Stover, Department of Biomedical Sciences, College of Medicine

National Academy of Medicine
Regan Bailey, Department of Behavioral Sciences and Social Medicine, College of Medicine
Barbara J. Culliton, College of Communication and Information
Susan B. Hassmiller, College of Nursing
Jill Quadagno, Department of Sociology, College of Social Sciences and Public Policy

National Academy of Engineering
David C. Larbalestier, Department of Mechanical Engineering, FAMU-FSU College of Engineering; chief materials scientist, National High Magnetic Field Laboratory
Manoj Shah, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering; FAMU-FSU College of Engineering
Longya Xu, Office of the Dean, FAMU-FSU College of Engineering

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Florida State University researchers are developing innovative technology to make intersections safer by aiming to reduce crashes and save lives.

A team of researchers from the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering is exploring how existing technology and new algorithms can prevent potential crashes at intersections and pave the way for smarter, safer roads.

“Millions of vehicles move through intersections every day. Our goal is to make that process safer,” said Olugbenga Moses Anubi, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and member of the research team.

About 25% of traffic deaths and half of all traffic injuries in the United States are attributed to intersections, according to the Federal Highway Administration.

HOW IT WORKS:
The team’s solution to the problem of intersection danger is called PREDISS, or the Predictive Intersection Safety System.

PREDISS combines data-driven analytics with physics-based methods to improve road safety. The system follows four key phases: identify, predict, anticipate, and warn/mitigate.

With initial funding awarded in 2024, the researchers used existing collision data and autonomous vehicle systems to develop an algorithm capable of predicting vehicle trajectories and identifying potential conflicts. PREDISS uses sensors, cameras, wireless technology and artificial intelligence to track vehicles and pedestrians approaching an intersection, allowing it to predict their trajectories and identify potential conflicts in real-time.

Now they are moving to the next phase — anticipation.

In collaboration with the City of Tallahassee’s Regional Transportation Management Center, the team will install PREDISS at a live traffic intersection to monitor real-time conditions. This setup will generate scenarios for testing algorithms and help researchers refine predictive models and develop proactive safety measures.

The final phases — warning and mitigation — will depend on data from the live intersection testing. Future implementations could include adaptive warning alarms, additional red-light enforcement and even automated intervention in autonomous vehicles to prevent collisions.

The hardware PREDISS uses has mostly been developed, which will help smooth the process for deploying and testing the system.

“We’re taking existing tools and applying them in creative ways to help solve this problem,” said project member Ren Moses, a FAMU-FSU College of Engineering professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

WHO’S INVOLVED:
Anubi and Moses are working with Paul Bupe Jr., a research faculty member dedicated to PREDISS, and Joshua Hollingsworth, manager of traffic operations for the City of Tallahassee.

Working with the city allows the researchers to collect data from a real-world scenario, helping to validate their algorithms and ensure that their system can handle the many unforeseen challenges presented by a busy intersection.

“Our cooperation with the city is a great example of how researchers can partner with outside collaborators and stakeholders to meet shared goals,” Anubi said. “This testing really accelerates the process of making PREDISS into a working system that can be used anywhere to improve traffic safety.”

This research is the second stage in the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Intersection Safety Challenge. After winning Stage 1A of the 2024 U.S. Department of Transportation’s Intersection Safety Challenge, the team has now won the 2025 Stage 1B tier II prize. These achievements have brought in $266,666 in funding to advance their project, which integrates AI-driven technology with physics to enhance road safety.

“We are grateful to be in Florida, where the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT), invests heavily in smart traffic management systems, such as traffic cameras, real-time traffic data and intelligent transportation systems to reduce congestion and improve safety,” Anubi said. “We hope to partner with FDOT in making our roadways, intersections and traffic systems as safe as possible.”

WHY IT MATTERS:
Fatal crashes in intersections take thousands of lives every year — more than 12,000 in 2022, the latest year with data available on the Federal Highway Administration website.

Engineering has a major role to play in mitigating those crashes. Changing the design of intersections is one potential alternative, but that option is not possible for every site, and even in newly engineered intersections, other technologies can continue improving safety.

“Traveling our roadways should be as stress-free and safe as possible,” Anubi said. “The opportunity to help improve safety on roads where we live and where our family and friends travel nearly every day emphasizes the importance of this project.”

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FAMU-FSU College of Engineering Professor Hui “Helen” Li has been named to the 2024 Class of National Academy of Inventors Fellows.

Li is the FSU Provost McKenzie Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and for the past 20 years has led power electronics research at Florida State University’s influential Center for Advanced Power Systems, or CAPS. She is a renowned expert in the power electronics field with a worldwide reputation for electronic devices.

“Professor Li exemplifies the highest standards of research at FSU,” said Vice President for Research Stacey S. Patterson. “Her commitment to innovation has not only contributed to the academic community but also brought tangible benefits to the broader public. I’d like to congratulate her on being named a National Academy of Inventors Fellow.”

The National Academy of Inventors (NAI) Fellows Program was established to highlight academic inventors who have demonstrated a prolific spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on quality of life, economic development and the welfare of society.

Li joins thirteen other current and former FSU faculty members — including FSU President Richard McCullough — as fellows of the NAI.

“It’s really rewarding to be recognized by the NAI,” Li said. “I’m very interested in both research and applying that research, so this honor is especially rewarding. I want to thank the many graduate students, postdoctoral researchers and fellow faculty members who have been hugely supportive of this work, and FSU for its support in helping to patent technology and bring it out of the lab.”

Li’s research focuses on power electronics, a field of electrical engineering concerned with the control and conversion of electrical power using electronic devices. She has developed numerous devices that make power electronics safer, more reliable and more efficient. Her work has applications in transportation, the electric power grid, solar power, energy distribution algorithms and more.

She has successfully brought her work from the lab to the marketplace, receiving 31 patents (with five more pending) for key technologies such as direct current power converters and renewable energy and battery products. Her patents have been cited by numerous companies in their own commercial patent filings.

“Professor Li is driven to see her work have a tangible, positive impact on society,” said Suvranu De, dean of the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering. “That is evident in her research and in her patents that bring solutions to challenging engineering problems. Professor Li’s innovative approach to her work and her dedication to solving real-world problems inspire both colleagues and students.”

The NAI Fellow program has 1,898 Fellows worldwide representing more than 300 prestigious universities and governmental and non-profit research institutes. Collectively, the Fellows hold more than 63,000 issued U.S. patents, which have generated over 13,000 licensed technologies, 3,200 companies and created more than 1 million jobs. In addition, over $3 trillion in revenue has been generated based on NAI Fellow discoveries.

The 2024 Fellows hail from 135 research universities, governmental and non-profit research institutions worldwide and their work spans across various disciplines. They are not only phenomenal researchers holding prestigious honors and distinctions such as the Nobel Prize, U.S. National Medal of Technology and Innovation and National Medal of Science, and membership to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, but are also incredible inventors who collectively hold over 5,000 issued U.S. patents and whose innovations are making significant tangible societal and economic impacts today and will well into the future.

“This year’s Class of NAI Fellows represents a truly impressive caliber of inventors. Each of these individuals are tackling real-world issues and creating solutions that propel us into the future. Through their work, they are making significant contributions to science, creating lasting societal impact, and growing the economy,” said Paul Sanberg, president of the NAI. “NAI Fellows as a whole are a driving force of innovation, generating crucial advancements across scientific disciplines and creating tangible impacts as they move their technologies from lab to marketplace. We are excited to welcome and honor this newest Class of Fellows during our 2025 Annual Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. I can think of no better group that exemplifies our conference theme, Forward Together: Innovating with Purpose.”

Li will be inducted at the 14th NAI Annual Conference, held June 23-26, 2025, in Atlanta.

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When FAMU-FSU College of Engineering Professor Fang Peng was a boy, he saw the power and peril of electricity firsthand.

He was in middle school when his remote Chinese hometown first received electric service. His family shared a single portable, 15-watt light bulb attached to a cable. It was his job to replace the bulb.

“One night, the bulb went out and I tried to change it in total darkness,” Peng said. “I accidentally stuck my left thumb in the socket and was immediately shocked. I got knocked off balance and down to the dirt floor, trembling as the electricity seared through my body. Luckily, my right hand got tangled with the cable and pulled the socket off my left hand, otherwise I would not have survived.”

After that near-death experience, Peng saw electricity as a challenge. He made it his life’s work to study the phenomenon and “tame the beast” that put him in danger but also allowed his family to see at night.

Peng’s latest research continues that mission. In a study published in Scientific Reports, he shows how a semiconductor device he created, named a Z-source inverter, can rapidly reduce voltage and current in the case of a short-circuit or open-circuit fault.

Existing safety mechanisms that stop electricity during a fault work quickly, but not always quickly enough. A typical circuit breaker could take around 50 milliseconds to activate — still long enough to kill a person or spark a fire. Peng’s digital Z-source converter/inverter can protect in 5 microseconds, or 1,000 times faster.

HOW IT WORKS
When a circuit is operating normally, power lines and cables carry electrical current over a long distance from generators to end users, whose use is called the load in an electric system. Engineers typically want it to be running as strong as possible to provide power to end users. But when something breaks or shorts the circuit, such as a downed tree, the current travels through that object. Electrical flashes that reach 35,000 degrees Fahrenheit can cause objects contacting the circuit to heat up fast and burn with intensity.

Peng’s electronic switch detects short circuits faster than existing methods. It can also handle a wide range of input voltages without needing extra components. This flexibility makes it useful in situations where the power supply isn’t constant or when you need to work with different voltage levels efficiently.

“We developed a way for the power source to be more responsive to the load,” he said. “Without end users noticing, we can immediately bring the power grid back to normal, without a surge current.”

WHY IT’S IMPORTANT
Downed power lines spark hundreds of wildfires every year in the United States. The 2023 Maui wildfires were some of the deadliest in U.S. history. According to the National Fire Protection Association, that fire started when a tree that had toppled onto a power line ignited.

“The purpose of our study is to make the energy source (voltage) more responsive to the loading condition,” Peng said. “If there is an unexpected large current, we want to reduce the voltage to a safe range to prevent fires. Traditional generators keep generating a constant voltage regardless of the current.”

RE-ENGINEERING THE GRID
Peng’s solution can be used to retrofit existing infrastructure to make it safer.

Diversifying the power grid with renewable energy sources like wind turbines, photovoltaic cells, and fuel cells is one way to regulate increases and decreases in voltage.

“Besides renewables, another way we can prevent surges in power is to artificially regulate the system with a power converter,” Peng said. “Whether natural or artificial, we want to create something that works autonomously with self-protection, resiliency and redundancy. One idea is to use a virtual resistor implemented by power electronics and control to provide the damping and stabilization of the circuit system.”

Much of the electric grid in the United States was built and expanded in the 1960s and 1970s. Along with fires from downed power lines, aging infrastructure poses other problems, such as power outages or vulnerability to cyberattacks.

“It is time to remake our grids and ‘tame the beast’ with power electronics, a new power technology which started flourishing in the 1980s when I started my research career,” Peng said. “I was truly lucky to become a protégé of several power electronics pioneers and world leaders. It takes a village to raise a child, and it takes the whole society/world to make this new grid happen.”

Peng’s research was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy and the Solar Energy Technologies Office.

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A FAMU-FSU College of Engineering researcher is developing technology to protect the electric grids of the future.

Assistant Professor Olugbenga Moses Anubi’s project “Concurrent Learning Cyber-Physical Framework for Resilient Electric Power System,” or CyberPREPS, will allow energy transmission systems to keep functioning in the wake of cyberattacks. A $2.89 million competitively selected cooperative agreement from the U.S. Department of Energy will fund $2 million of the work.

“As our electric grid grows more complex, with greater connections and a wider array of energy sources, security challenges become even more difficult,” Anubi said. “This work will help meet the challenge of securing the electric grid against cyberattacks and other extreme events.”

HOW IT WORKS:
Anubi and his team will develop algorithms to detect and mitigate the effects of cyberattacks in the electric grid.

Current approaches to keeping the electric grid’s computer systems safe use artificial intelligence and machine learning to detect anomalies that signal an attack. This works well when the data they are trained on is similar to the operating conditions under which they function. But when they encounter new situations, the safeguards don’t work as well. Attackers may mimic extreme events to force their way into a system.

Anubi’s algorithms will solve this problem by combining knowledge of the electric grid’s operations with secondary information sources such as the energy market to estimate the “true states” of the system, which will be used to maintain critical operations. All this can happen while an attack is underway, essentially neutralizing the effects of the cyberattacks.

The approach uses a new machine learning/artificial intelligence method called “concurrent learning.” The proposed approach is very similar to the way the human body fights viruses. In this case, the domain knowledge acts like the primary vaccine to boost the grid’s immunity, while the secondary information sources act like a booster shot.

Anubi will use the hardware-in-the-loop system pioneered by Florida State University’s Center for Advanced Power Systems to test the reliability of the approach.

WHY IT MATTERS:
Electricity powers the modern world, but the grid that moves electricity around the country is vulnerable to cyberattacks by malicious actors and failure brought on by natural disasters or accidents. The increasing popularity of the internet-enabled appliances in homes, industry and elsewhere that make up the “Internet of Things” adds to the vulnerability of the electric grid.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office reported that cyberattacks could cause widespread power outages and recommended that the Department of Energy develop a national strategy for securing the grid.

WHO’S INVOLVED:
Anubi will lead a team that includes researchers from FSU and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, industry partners Nhu Energy in Tallahassee and General Electric’s Global Research Center (GRC) in New York, and utility partner New York Power Authority. FAMU-FSU College of Engineering Associate Professor Omar Faruque will focus on developing the hardware-in-the-loop testing platform to validate the algorithm.

Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte will develop the cyberattacks for testing. GRC will use their Digital Ghost platform to build an attack detector and Nhu Energy will provide the controller platforms to implement the algorithm. Also, GRC and Nhu Energy will develop a commercialization plan for the technology.

WHERE IS FUNDING COMING FROM:
The Department of Energy (DOE) is providing funding for the research through its Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER), with the federal portion being valued at $2 million, and the cost-share valued at approximately $887,000. The study is part of a larger initiative by DOE and CESER to improve the cybersecurity of America’s power grid.

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