Postdoc Cyber Security of Digital Substations for Power Grids

at  TU Delft

JOB DESCRIPTION

COCOON project, funded under Horizon Europe, is recruiting 3 talented, enthusiastic, and ambitious postdoctoral researchers to perform excellent research and achieve breakthroughs in the field of power system resilience and cyber security. The main objective of COCOON is to deliver practical cyber-physical power system solutions by bridging secure networked systems research and innovation with power system engineering. To this end, a set of technological innovations will be developed for the detection and prevention of cyber attacks in digital substations. The COCOON solutions will be demonstrated at TSO, DSO, DRES, and digital substation in 4 real demonstration environments.
Within the EU COCOON project, Delft University of Technology is hiring 3 postdoctoral researchers of 15 months each on the subject “Cyber security of digital substations for power grids.” The candidates are expected to posses a strong background in: (1) power system analysis, power system dynamics and protection or (2) computer networking or (3) cyber security.

The project objectives are to:

• Postdoc 1: Develop a real-time digital twin of the power grid in RTDS to analyse how cyber attacks simulated using HIL on a digital substation with IEDs can cause cascading failures;
• Postdoc 2: Develop and test anomaly detection using AI techniques for digital substations;
• Postdoc 3: Develop and test cyber secure, real-time protection schemes for digital substations by performing network integrity checks for digital substation traffic (IEC61850 GOOSE and Sampled Values) using message authentication mechanisms such as HMAC.

You will develop and integrate these technologies in a cyber range which will be a playground for network penetration testing and ethical hacking activities. Our large RTDS infrastructure and a digital substation are connected for hardware-in-the-loop simulations and cyber attacks. They are coupled with IT-OT systems, the Control Room of the Future (CRoF) and a cyber range. This state-of-the-art lab will be used to conduct research and demonstration of prototype solutions to both academic and industry partners.
You will be supervised by Dr. Alex Stefanov (Associate Professor) and join the Cyber Resilient Power Grids (CRPG) team.
You will dedicate about 60% of the time to research activities within COCOON project together with 1 PhD and 1 postdoc.
You will dedicate about 40% of the time to help with PhDs supervision.
We offer 3 Postdoc appointments of 15 months each with a start date of no later than June 1, 2025.

JOB REQUIREMENTS

Essentials:

• Demonstrable interest in interdisciplinary and intersectoral research, and specifically the interface between power systems, information and communication technologies, and preferably cyber security.
• Completed a PhD degree in a highly quantitative and analytical related discipline (electrical engineering with an emphasis on power systems, automatic control, applied mathematics, and/or computer science).
• Excellent academic and publication track record.
• Excellent analytical and writing skills.
• Strong knowledge of power system dynamics, computer networking, and/or cyber security.
• Very good command of English. The minimum requirement of a TOEFL score of 100 or IELTS of 7.0 with scores of at least 6.5 for each section (writing, reading, listening, speaking) applies to all candidates wanting to pursue a Postdoc at TU Delft.
• You enjoy performing research. You are independent, self-motivated, and eager to learn.
• You are keen to work with industry partners to link real-world challenges to fundamental research questions.
• Very good, demonstrable experience with (1) computer modelling and real-time simulation such as RTDS and/or OPAL-RT or (2) protocols used in digital substations for protection, automation and control such as IEC61850 and IEC 104 or (3) intrusion detection systems.
• You enjoy programming and hold your code to a high standard.

Desirables:

• Knowledge of computer networking and cyber security.
• Knowledge of cyber security standards for OT operations (IEC 62351/ IEC 62443).
• Knowledge on cryptographic techniques for message authentication, integrity, and confidentiality check.
• Experience with computer networking (or software-defined networking) and penetration testing (network or device level).
• Experience with Python and machine learning libraries.
• Experience with collaborative software development (e.g. open source).

Please refer the Job description for details