Dr. Heena Rathore

Department of Computer Science Texas A&M University Texarkana, USA

Speaker Biography:

Dr. Heena Rathore is a Visiting Professor at Texas A&M University, Texarkana, USA, in the department of computer science. Earlier Dr. Rathore was Data Scientist and Program Manager at Hiller Measurements. Prior to that, she was a post doctorate researcher for US-Qatar Joint Collaborative Project between Temple University, USA, University of Idaho, USA and Qatar University. Also, she was a visiting scholar for Wichita State University. She received her Ph.D. (with distinction) in Computer Science and Engineering Department while she was a Tata Consultancy Services Research Scholar at Indian Institute of Technology, India. She has also worked professionally as Design Executive with Phosphate India Private Limited and academically as Guest/Assistant Professor with University of Texas, Austin and SS College of Engineering, India respectively. She has been the winner of number of prestigious awards including Young Engineer Award, Global Engineering Impact Awards and Graphical System Design Achievement Awards by National Instruments. She has published more than 30 papers in peer reviewed journals and conferences in her field and is the sole author of Mapping Biological Systems to Network Systems (Springer). She is an IEEE senior member serving as the Vice Chair of IEEE Central Texas Section and Vice Chair of IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, San Antonio Chapter and is an ACM distinguished speaker. She was also featured on TedX, Qatar held by TedXAlDafnaEd in Qatar and her work is covered in professional and major trade publications, major media, such as Mircrowave Journal, Everything RF, Financial Express, Science Reporter, Times of India, and India Today. She has been invited as a panelist, TPC member and has been a chair for multiple sessions. She is a reviewer of many peer-reviewed journals and conferences in IEEE, ACM, Elsevier, IET etc. Her research interests include cyber physical systems, deep learning, machine learning, security, cryptocurrency, distributed systems, wireless networks biologically inspired systems and software defined networks.

Talk Title:

Secure Smart Energy Systems

Talk Abstract:

Smart Energy Systems (SES) are truly revolutionizing the way in which power grids and energy distribution systems are managed and operated efficiently. Such systems rely on active sensing, communication and control of various physical entities connected to the grid. In essence, a SES can be considered as one example of Cyber Physical Systems (CPS), which consist of sensing and cyber components controlled by digital and analog signals. Such systems are engineered for human interaction through tightly integrated electronics and logic elements. Although these systems are efficient and powerful, they are susceptible to vulnerabilities and threats due to attacks and unauthorized access. This keynote talk will discuss a diverse set of strategies to make CPS systems secure using various techniques such as cryptocurrency, deep learning, machine learning, and bio-inspired approaches. The talk will describe different types of attack scenarios on the sensing and cyber parts of CPS. The theoretical aspects and analysis of different deep learning and machine learning strategies to secure the system against such attacks will be discussed. This will be followed by a discussion about different bio-inspired approaches for security in CPS. An emerging technique for securing CPS is rooted in cryptocurrency-based approaches, which will be covered in the talk as well. The talk will also compare and contrast the above three techniques and discuss strengths and weakness of each technique. Finally, the practical implementation of each of the algorithms along with future challenges will be described.