Asee peer logo

Multidisciplinary Game-based Approach for Generating Student Enthusiasm for Addressing Critical Infrastructure Challenges

Download Paper |

Conference

2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

New Orleans, Louisiana

Publication Date

June 26, 2016

Start Date

June 26, 2016

End Date

June 29, 2016

ISBN

978-0-692-68565-5

ISSN

2153-5965

Conference Session

Multidisciplinary Efforts in Upper-level Courses

Tagged Division

Multidisciplinary Engineering

Tagged Topic

Diversity

Page Count

15

DOI

10.18260/p.25763

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/25763

Download Count

660

Paper Authors

biography

Timothy R McJunkin Idaho National Laboratory Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-4987-9170

visit author page

Timothy R. McJunkin is a Senior Research Engineer at Idaho National Laboratory in the Energy and Environment Science and Technology Division, since 1999. He has also served as an adjunct instructor at Idaho State University, teaching control systems and resilient controls systems. Prior to joining INL, he was a design engineer at Compaq Computer Corporation in Houston Texas. Mr. McJunkin is the principal architect of the Grid Game developed for the Resilient Control Systems class.

visit author page

biography

Craig G Rieger Idaho National Laboratory

visit author page

Craig Rieger, PhD, PE, is the Chief Control Systems Research Engineer at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL), pioneering multidisciplinary research in the area of next-generation resilient control systems.

In addition, he has organized and chaired eight Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) technically co-sponsored symposia and one National Science Foundation workshop in this new research area, and authored more than 40 peer-reviewed publications.

Craig received B.S. and M.S. degrees in Chemical Engineering from Montana State University in 1983 and 1985, respectively, and a PhD in Engineering and Applied Science from Idaho State University in 2008. Craig’s PhD coursework and dissertation focused on measurements and control, with specific application to intelligent, supervisory ventilation controls for critical infrastructure.

Craig is a senior member of IEEE, and has 20 years of software and hardware design experience for process control system upgrades and new installations. Craig has also been a supervisor and technical lead for control systems engineering groups having design, configuration management, and security responsibilities for several INL nuclear facilities and various control system architectures.

visit author page

biography

Aunshul Rege Temple University

visit author page

Dr. Rege is an Assistant Professor with the Department of Criminal Justice at Temple University. Her main areas of research include critical infrastructure resilience and protection, cyber and cyber-physical security, infrastructure planning and policy, and global security and international affairs.

visit author page

biography

Saroj K Biswas Temple University

visit author page

Saroj Biswas is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Temple University specializing in electrical machines and power systems, multimedia tutoring, and control and optimization of dynamic systems. He has been the principle investigator of a project for the development of an intelligent tutoring shell that allows instructors create their own web-based tutoring system. His current research focuses on security of cyber-physical systems based on multiagent framework with applications to the power grid, and the integration of an intelligent virtual laboratory environment in curriculum. He is an associate editor of Dynamics of Continuous, Discrete and Impulsive Systems: Series B, and is a member of IEEE, ASEE, and Sigma Xi.

visit author page

author page

Michael Haney University of Idaho

biography

Michael John Santora University of Idaho

visit author page

Dr. MIchael Santora is a Clinical Assistant Professor at University of Idaho since Fall of 2013. He has worked in industry as a R&D Controls Engineer creating OEM machinary. He specializes in controls, embedded systems and automation.

visit author page

biography

Brian K. Johnson University of Idaho, Moscow Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-0747-2794

visit author page

Brian K. Johnson received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1992. Currently, he is a Professor and the Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories Chair in Power Engineering in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Idaho (Moscow, Idaho). His interests include power systems applications of power electronics, power systems protection and relaying, resilient operation of power systems, applied superconductivity, and power systems transients. Dr. Johnson is a registered professional engineer in the state of Idaho.

visit author page

author page

Ronald Laurids Boring

biography

D. Subbaram Naidu P.E. University of Minnesota Duluth

visit author page

Dr. D. Subbaram Naidu did his graduate (M.S. & Ph.D.) work in Electrical Engineering with an emphasis in Control Systems at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). Professor Naidu held various positions with IIT, the Guidance and Control Division at NASA Langley Research Center, Old Dominion University, the Center of Excellence for Control Theory at the United States Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), the Center of Excellence for Ships and Ocean Structures (CESOS), Measurement and Control Laboratory at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, the Universities of Western (at Perth) and Southern (Adelaide) Australia, and East China Normal University. Professor Naidu was most recently with Idaho State University (ISU) during 1990-2014. Professor Naidu joined the University of Minnesota, Duluth on August 25, 2014 as Minnesota Power Jack Rowe Endowed Chair for Energy and Controls, and as Professor in Electrical Engineering.

visit author page

biography

John F. Gardner Boise State University

visit author page

Gardner is Director of the CAES Energy Efficiency Research Institute (CEERI) and professor of mechanical and biomedical engineering at Boise State University, where he has been a faculty member since 2000. Through CEERI he leads research, outreach, and educational efforts to promote the efficient and effective use of energy. He received his Bachelor’s degree from Cleveland State University in 1981, and his M.S. and Ph.D. (all in Mechanical Engineering) from Ohio State in 1983 and 1987, respectively. He has published more than 60 peer-reviewed research papers, 2 textbooks and has been awarded 3 US Patents. He is a registered professional engineer in the state of Idaho and a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

visit author page

Download Paper |

Abstract

Building upon past courses, several universities across the United States (U.S) have incorporated a critical infrastructure educational game platform as a unifying platform to integrate different disciplines to a common goal. The critical infrastructure backbones of the world provide the delivery mechanisms for energy and other utilities that provide the lifestyle we have come to expect in our society. As these critical infrastructure systems have evolved, the complexity of their integration has generated numerous challenges that are more pronounced as the infrastructure ages. Although still a modern technological wonder, the aging power grid needs a workforce that understands the many facets required to reliably and securely integrate advanced communication and control technologies with the infrastructure and systems to address the new demands of increased renewable and distributed generation, complex markets, and resilience to damaging storms and cyber attacks. Educational institutions need to accept the challenge of weaving the great diversity of disciplines into the common fabric which allows specialties to effectively work together. To energize the multidisciplinary studies challenge, [redacted Northwest state]]’s public universities, [redacted Midwestern state], [redacted mountain state university] and [east coast university], in cooperation with U.S. Department of Energy’s [national lab], developed undergraduate and graduate courses targeted at the critical infrastructure challenge, using a game based approach. The Grid Game provides realistic and entertaining motivation in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, through inclusion of the physics of power systems, cyber-physical vulnerabilities, energy markets, and control systems. The game provides the mechanism for understanding the impact on stability of an electric grid due to factors driven by computer security, balanced growth of customer base and power generation assets, energy markets, and the balance of automation and human operator decisions. The human decision making process of grid operators and cybercriminals supply a basis for the consideration of other social components including criminology studies. The methodology and outcomes of two sets of courses at the universities will be discussed in this paper. Findings from the special topics course in resilient systems co-taught by Electrical and Computer Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Computer Science Professors and professionals in disciplines of control systems and cognitive psychology offered through [redacted universities] will be discussed. The outcomes of mentor guided projects to resilience challenges in: multi-agent decision controls, human factors, computer security and power systems will be assessed. Projects range from notional resilience improvement to integration of distributed electric grid simulation to hardware in the loop. One engagement assessment method is the percentage of students that continue projects beyond the one semester course. We will also discuss findings from an integrative grid game course project between the Electrical and Computer Engineering and Criminal Justice departments at [redacted university]. Specifically, we will share lessons learned in four areas: (i) assessing student engagement and recognition of disciplinary contributions and roles, (ii) fusing liberal arts and engineering to gain a holistic approach to learning about grid cybersecurity, (iii) approaches to promote discipline-specific student research capabilities and enhancing experiential learning, and (iv) using this multidisciplinary course project to further improve the Grid Game's functionality.

McJunkin, T. R., & Rieger, C. G., & Rege, A., & Biswas, S. K., & Haney, M., & Santora, M. J., & Johnson, B. K., & Boring, R. L., & Naidu, D. S., & Gardner, J. F. (2016, June), Multidisciplinary Game-based Approach for Generating Student Enthusiasm for Addressing Critical Infrastructure Challenges Paper presented at 2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, New Orleans, Louisiana. 10.18260/p.25763

ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2016 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015