Two Doctoral Students Named IISP Cybersecurity Fellows

Posted January 29, 2018

Jenna McGrath, a doctoral student in the Georgia Tech School of Public Policy, and Celine Irvene, a doctoral student in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, received funding from the Institute for Information Security and Privacy (IISP) Cybersecurity Fellowship program to support their research during Spring 2018. McGrath’s research on cyberattacks on electric grids reflects the growing importance of protecting the electricity infrastructure against cyber-enabled attacks, and identifying vulnerabilities unaddressed by current policies. The IISP Cybersecurity Fellowship program supports unfunded and under-funded emerging research, and motivates students with an advanced understanding of information assurance and cyber threats to pursue innovative research.

“My research considers significant outages and unusual incidents on the grid caused by weather events, technical failures, and malicious physical and cyberattacks,” said McGrath. “I then evaluate how the characteristics of these incidents affect policy interventions and funding allocations at the federal level. In particular, is there a difference in policy response and subsequent funding when the incident is related to a confirmed or suspected attack versus a weather-related outage? Furthermore, I seek to determine whether these policy improvements will actually help prevent and deter future physical and cyber-attacks, especially as methods and motivations for attacks are becoming more sophisticated. I am particularly interested in researching the risk of cyber-enabled physical attacks given past physical and cyber-attacks and the ensuing policy responses.”

According to McGrath, her research can help better assess the metrics of attacks on electricity infrastructure in the U.S. and the policy response. It can further explore the vulnerable aspects left unaddressed and potential targets in more complex future attacks.

“Receiving this award allows me to focus more of my research on the risk of cyber-enabled physical attacks on the electric grid. Additionally, inclusion in the Cybersecurity Fellowship program will allow me to communicate, collaborate, and learn from the program’s participating faculty, excelling my policy-based research further and adding novel computing, cybersecurity, and other interdisciplinary perspectives and techniques to my work,” said McGrath.

McGrath is currently advised by Valerie Thomas, professor of Natural Systems in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering.

“McGrath is able to address a type of question that others are not," said Thomas. “The vulnerability of the electric grid to cyberattacks has significant public policy applications, with potential for identifying a range of local to national scale measures that could improve the security of the grid, as well as to identify gaps or mismatches between utility or regulator security actions and the risk profile.”

McGrath received her bachelor’s degree in environmental policy and analysis in 2011 and her master’s degree in energy analysis in 2012, both from Boston University. Upon graduation, she became a fellow at the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, and then worked in research and business development at an energy storage start-up at Boston. She began her studies at Georgia Tech in 2013, and was selected as a fellow for the National Science Foundation Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship Program (IGERT). There, she focused on nanomaterials for energy storage and conversion for two years. She was then selected as a Sam Nunn Security Program Fellow from 2015 to 2016.

The School of Public Policy is part of Georgia Tech’s Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts.

For more information on Fall 2017 funding recipients visit the Georgia Institute for Information Security and Privacy website.