Pacome Landry Ambassa

About the research project «safeGRID: Security and privacy in Fog-Enabled Smart Grid»

Research line: Smart energy management system for Secure HANs (Home Area Networks) that integrates with Smart grid architectures

Mentor: Prof. Javier Martínez Moguerza

Abstract

safeGRID is a multidisciplinary project aiming to address the challenge of energy management in the next generation distribution grid, in the presence of a large share of distributed renewable energy resources and active participation of the new actors in the electricity ecosystem, such as consumers, prosumers and energy service companies. The project aims to develop a novel secure, privacy-enabled and resilient energy management infrastructure for a distribution system based on fog computing technologies. First, a fully distributed optimisation algorithm to schedule the energy consumption of end-consumers will be developed. The proposed algorithm is decentralised and brings some advantages to the system in terms of scalability and robustness and contributes to matching supply and demand and minimising cost for the utility companies and the end consumers. Subsequently, it addresses the problem of false data injection attacks and consumers breaching agreements, with an innovative combination of information security mechanisms with one’s taking physical measurements and properties of power networks into account. Finally, the project will also develop privacy-preserving mechanisms that minimise the amount of sensitive information inferred from end-users’ data or when data are released or shared with untrusted/trusted third parties for data analytics, control, and verification.

About Pacome Landry Ambassa

Pacome L. Ambassa is a researcher heading toward the completion of his PhD degree with the Department of Computer Science at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. He received the BSc and MSc degrees in computer science from the University of Ngaoundere (Cameroon) in 2009 and 2013, respectively. His research interest includes security and privacy for e-healthcare systems, cyber-physical systems, smart grid systems, and critical infrastructure protection. As part of his PhD programme, he completed 2 research visits (April — May 2015) and (March-May 2016), respectively at Norwegian Information Security Laboratory, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Gjovik, Norway, under the supervision of Prof. Stephen D. Wolthusen.

He was recognized as an outstanding young researcher in computer science in 2016, selected out of a hundred applicants over the world and given the opportunity to attend the 4th Heidelberg Laureate Forum. Aside from his research skills, Pacome is also involved in many leadership activities through community empowerment and awareness.

Currently, he is developing “safeGRID: Security and privacy in Fog-Enabled Smart Grid” project as a GET-COFUND Marie Curie Fellow at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Within the Hardware-Software Design (GDHwSw) Research group.