Dr. Ravikumar Gelli’s research on securing critical energy infrastructure and enabling trustworthy infrastructure for clean energy resources has gained national interest as recognized by his National Science Foundation (NSF), Iowa Economic Development Authority (IEDA), and DOE Cybersecurity Energy Security and Emergency Response (CESER) federal and state-funded multi-million dollar research grants ($3.6M+ including state and federal funds and cost-share).
Gelli was promoted to research assistant professor in ECpE in 2020 after his three years of successful Postdoctoral research, where he contributed to 30+ DOE and NSF project proposals. Within two years, Gelli secured multi-million research grants as a Lead PI and established a strong collaboration with national labs, the power industry, power utilities and other universities. He established himself as one of the leading researchers contributing to enhancing resiliency, reliability and cybersecurity for building next-generation trustworthy infrastructure for modern power systems.
Gelli’s research focuses on integrating physics-based grid-aware models, cyber-informed methodologies, and intelligent learning-based (Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and Reinforcement Learning) algorithms to design, develop, and demonstrate defense-in-depth cybersecurity and resiliency for bulk power systems, distribution grids, and distributed energy resources (DERs), such as distributed solar, storage, electric vehicles, and other clean energy technologies. The growing adoption of DERs, including building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV), utility-scale photovoltaics (UPV), electric vehicle charging stations (EVCS), and other grid-edge clean energy technologies, could pose cybersecurity challenges for future electric power grid operations if cybersecurity is not taken into consideration. Gelli’s team is working towards devising novel systems and tools for building trustworthy (security + resiliency) DER communication infrastructure, proactive defense-in-depth cyber-physical security technologies, including physics-informed and cyber-informed intelligent learning-based methods, and next-generation edge-intelligent devices (EIDs) that brings the power of AI and edge computing at the grid-edge connected devices.
These next-generation systems and technologies help ensure modern energy delivery systems are designed, installed, operated and maintained to quickly recover from grid disturbances and cyberattacks. Gelli’s research contributions to protecting the security and resiliency of America’s power grid are in synergy with DOE’s goal of providing cleaner and cheaper power to Americans while advancing President Biden’s goal of a 100% clean electrical grid by 2035 and net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. The research output from these projects will be of great significance for enhancing electric grid reliability, resiliency, and security of the U.S. critical energy infrastructure and the interests of the U.S. government.