Creative Research Medal

The research of Jin Ye, associate professor in the College of Engineering, focuses on the cyber-physical security of power electronics and electric drives with applications in smart grids, manufacturing systems and electric vehicles. She has been a major contributor in the Multilevel Cybersecurity for Photovoltaic Systems research project, which has already resulted in several high-impact scholarly contributions and technologies and highly competitive research funding such as a $3.6 million award from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Solar Energy Technologies Office. For the DOE effort, Ye is leading a UGA team that collaborates with a consortium of partners from the public and private sectors to shore up the country’s power grid defenses. The goal is to design, develop and test a two-level cybersecurity software solution for the solar photovoltaic (PV) industry. Ye and her team aim to integrate several security monitoring technologies into one integrated toolbox to defend the PV system against a variety of cyber-attacks.