RESILIENCEHelping Strengthen America’s Critical Infrastructure
Everyday life depends on a robust infrastructure network that provides access to running water, communications technology and electricity, among other basic necessities. The experts who keep our national infrastructure secure and resilient also need a strong network to share their knowledge and train the next generation of professionals capable of solving complex infrastructure challenges.
Everyday life depends on a robust infrastructure network that provides access to running water, communications technology and electricity, among other basic necessities. The experts who keep our national infrastructure secure and resilient also need a strong network to share their knowledge and train the next generation of professionals capable of solving complex infrastructure challenges. This means finding ways to bring government, academia and the private sector together. One way is through sabbaticals that temporarily place professors in our national labs.
Daniel Cole, an associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh, partnered with the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) in 2024 to study transformative approaches that increase effective and efficient security and resilience for America’s power systems and other critical infrastructure. For nearly a year, Cole worked alongside INL researchers to learn and improve the cybersecurity of industrial control systems that manage essential services such as electricity, transportation, supply chains and water quality.
This collaboration enhanced Cole’s understanding of how to ensure critical functions during cyberattacks or exposed vulnerabilities. He also built partnerships that will help develop the next generation of experts dedicated to protecting the nation’s critical infrastructure. These sabbaticals with INL are available to others in academia and contribute to solving the nation’s most complex problems.
Engineering Legacy
Cole grew up in a family of engineers — his father and two brothers are all engineers. As an acclaimed control systems engineer, he has mentored and developed the next generation of engineers. He created the SHURE-Grid program at the University of Pittsburgh in 2023. SHURE-Grid is a summer program that provides an opportunity for students from various fields to explore the intersection of cybersecurity and the energy grid. The program enabled students to work closely with INL experts.
Over 12 weeks, participants learned about the power grid’s significance and developed recommendations to protect it from cyberattacks. SHURE-Grid’s interdisciplinary nature included meetings with cybersecurity and IT professionals, culminating in students presenting their findings to Department of Energy employees.
Cole’s engineering perspective and expertise often led him to identify a recurring gap in the nation’s critical power systems infrastructure: assessing cyber vulnerabilities. He saw the benefits of an increasingly digitized world but also the need to address the increased vulnerabilities that come with the higher efficiency of digitized industrial control systems.
