Welcome!
Jun Yan, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Graduate Program Co-Director (thesis-based)
Research Chair in Artificial Intelligence in Cyber Security and Resilience
Concordia Institute for Information Systems Engineering (CIISE)
Concordia University, Montréal, Québec, Canada
Office: EV Building, 003.119, Sir George Williams Campus
Email: jun.yan(at)concordia.ca
Bienvenue/Welcome!
I am a faculty member at the Concordia Institute for Information Systems Engineering (CIISE) at Concordia University, Montréal. I hold the Concordia University Research Chair in Artificial Intelligence in Cyber Security and Resilience (Tier 2) and serve as the graduate program director for thesis-based students at CIISE. I joined Concordia in 2018 and received an early tenure promotion to Associate Professor in 2022.
I am a founding co-director of the Digital Twins Hub at Concordia and the NSF EuReCa Global Center with Santa Clara University (USA), and the founding chair of the IEEE PES AMPS-BDA Task Force on Big Data Analytics for Security and Resilience in Power Systems. I am also a founding member of the Security Research Centre (SRC) and the Applied Artificial Intelligence Institute (AI2) and an affiliate member of the Centre for Innovation in Construction and Infrastructure Engineering and Management (CICIEM) at Concordia.
With my students and collaborators, I have published over 100 peer-reviewed research articles in the areas of computational intelligence and cyber-physical security, with applications to critical infrastructures such as smart grids and smart cities.
According to Google Scholar metrics, our papers are among the most-cited publications in the IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics (TIE, #13 of 7,400+ publications, link), the IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics (TMECH, #10 of 2,100+ publications, link), and the IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security (TIFS, #21 of 2,000+ publications, link) since 2017. One survey has also been the most cited paper of IET Cyber-Physical Systems: Theories & Applications since 2016. Our research has also been featured in the IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security (TIFS), the IEEE Smart Grid Newsletter, and the IEEE Signal Processing Society eNewsletter, among others.
A complete list of my publications can be found here.
I received my Ph.D. from the University of Rhode Island (USA) under the supervision of Prof. Haibo He in 2017, during which I also received the Excellence in Doctoral Research Award of URI (2018), Best Reviewers of IEEE TSG (2017), Best Student Paper Award at IEEE WCCI (2016), Best Paper Award at IEEE ICC (2014), Best Readings of IEEE ComSoc (2013), among others. Feel free to check the contents below or other pages above for more information.
News
2024
Shun's paper on Early Wildfire Detection and Distance Estimation Using Aerial Visible-Infrared Images has been accepted by IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics (TIE). Well done!
Yuanliang's paper on Knowledge-Informed Auto-Penetration Testing Based on Reinforcement Learning with Reward Machines has been accepted by WCCI/IJCNN 2024. See you in Japan!
Dr. Yan was awarded a new $135k Mitacs Accelerate Grant in partnership with Ericsson's Global AI Hub on Causal Graph Learning-Based Proactive Anomaly Management for Radio Access Networks (RAN) in 5G and Beyond.
Moshfeka's paper on adversarial machine learning in false data injection in smart grids has been accepted by IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics (TII). Well done!
Moshfeka has successfully defended her PhD thesis on Applied Artificial Intelligence for Secure and Resilient Smart Grid. She will be joining the University of Waterloo as a postdoctoral fellow. Congratulations, Dr. Rahman!
Hang's paper on cyber threats targeting converter-driven stability PMSG-based wind farms has been accepted by IEEE Transactions on Power Systems (TPS). Well done!
Chengming's paper on trilateral geometry for knowledge distillation has been accepted by the International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR 2024). Well done! (ArXiv preprint)
Yefei's paper on dynamic trigger-based attack modelling and mitigation for machine learning-based IoT malware classifiers has been accepted by the IEEE International Conference on Communication (ICC 2024). Well done!
Yiheng Zhao and Claire Jiahui Wang joined our group as PhD students. Welcome!
2023
[News] Our team (Y. Zeng, J. Yan, H. Ge, and M. Nik-Bakht) was awarded a new $1.7 million NSERC Alliance-Mitacs Accelerate Grant in partnership with CREO Solutions on Evidence-based monitoring of construction projects through effective, reliable, and credible RFI analysis and management.
Our international team (Y. Liu, H. Lee, and Y. Fang at Santa Clara University, USA; J. Yan and M. Ghafouri at Concordia University, Canada) was awarded an NSF Global Centers - Track 2 Grant on Equitable and User-Centric Energy Market for Resilient Grid-interactive Communities.
Our joint paper on graph MARL for inverter-based AVC has been accepted by IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid (TSG).
Yasaman Haghjoo joined our group as a PhD student. Welcome!
Dr. Yan proposed a new Task Force on Big Data Analytics for Security and Resilience in Power Systems at the 2023 IEEE PES General Meeting.
It has been approved by IEEE AMPS/BDA. Stay tuned as we unroll the activities, and feel free to contact me if you are interested in joining us!Dr. Yan has been appointed the Concordia University Research Chair (Tier 2) in Artificial Intelligence in Cyber Security and Resilience.
Dr. Yan delivered an invited seminar on "Applied Artificial Intelligence for Smart Grid Security" at Monash University, Australia.
Dr. Yan was appointed the Graduate Program Director for thesis-based students at CIISE.
Dr. Yan presented the DualHGNN paper at IJCNN 2023. It was wonderful to meet old and new friends at IJCNN this year!
Ludjina Benoit and Mohammad-Hossien Darabi joined our group as the prestigious NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Award interns. Welcome!
Shun has successfully defended his Master's thesis on early wildfire detection, geolocation, and 3D reconstruction using aerial visible and infrared images. Congratulations!
Our joint paper on virtual data collection for distributed PVs has been accepted by IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid (TSG).
Dr. Yan delivered an invited seminar on "The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Smart Grid Security" at Clarkson University, USA (link).
Our paper on dual hypergraph neural networks (DualHGNN) for semi-supervised node classification has been accepted by IJCNN 2023. See you in Australia!
Dr. Yan delivered a virtual seminar on "AI-based Smart Technologies in Smart Grid Security" to the University of Delaware, USA.
Our joint paper on measurement data integrity attacks has been accepted by IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid (TSG).
Yuanliang's paper on packetized energy trading and management for virtual power plants has been accepted by IEEE PES GM 2023. See you in Orlando!
Research Highlights
My research lies in the intersection of cyber-physical security, applied machine intelligence, and smart resilient infrastructures. I have authored or co-authored over 100 peer-reviewed publications in the area, and a complete list of my research publications can be found here.
Cyber-Physical Security
Smart grids and smart cities security
Cyber-physical modeling and co-simulation
Data-driven situational awareness
Applied Machine Intelligence
Applied computational intelligence
Adversarial machine learning
Transparent and trustworthy intelligence
Smart and Resilient Infrastructures
Self-adaptive optimization
Attack-resilient and self-healing systems
Information and decision fusion
Recognition & Awards
Most cited paper of IET Cyber-Physical Systems: Theory & Applications: "Cyber-Physical Attacks and Defenses in the Smart Grid: A Survey."
Best Paper, IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC), 2014 [Link]
Best Student Paper, IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence (WCCI), 2016. [Link]
Best Readings on "Communications & Information Systems Security - Cyber Attacks" of IEEE Communication Society (ComSoc), 2013. [Link]
Front-cover paper on IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security (TIFS), vol. 8, no. 4, April 2013. [Link]
Excellence in Doctoral Research Award, University of Rhode Island, 2018 (sole recipient). [Link]
Best Reviewers, IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, 2016. [Link]
Funding
Since 2018, our group has received over $3.5 million in research funding, including:
Mitacs-Ericsson Accelerate (2024-)
NSERC Alliance/Mitacs Accelerate Joint Grant (2023-)
Concordia University Research Chair (2023-)
CFI Innovation Fund (2021-)
NSERC Discovery Grant (2018-)
FRQSC-NSFC Research Grant on Smart City and Big Data (2020-2023)
Mitacs-Ericsson Accelerate Cluster (2019-2023)
FRQNT Établissement de Nouveaux Chercheurs Universitaires (2018-2020)
Mitacs Globalink Research Internship Program (2019, 2022, 2023)
Nvidia GPU Grant (2018-19)
Teaching
I offer two elective courses for graduate students, on the timely topics of smart grids and industrial control system security and machine learning in information system security. I also teach some undergraduate courses, mostly during the summer.
INSE 6640 - Smart Grids and Control System Security
INSE 6630 - Recent Developments in Information Systems Security
COEN 231 - Introduction to Discrete Mathematics
Services
I served on several journal editorial boards and conference organizing committees, including but not limited to:
Associate Editor
Complex and Intelligent Systems (CAIS)
Energy Conversion and Economics (ECE)
Guest Editor
"Situation Awareness for Smart Distribution Systems," Energies
"Human-centric Social Big Data Privacy, Security and Frontier computing," Human-centric Computing and Information Sciences (HCIS)
"Distributed Learning, Optimization, and Control Methods for Future Power Grids," Frontiers in Energy Research
Organization Committee Member
Local arrangement chair, 2024 IEEE International Conference On The Design Of Reliable Communication Networks (DRCN)
Local organization chair, 2023 Cyber Security in Networking Conference (CSNet)
Local organization co-chair, 2021 International Conference on Computational Data and Social Networks (CSoNet)
Technical program chair, 2020 IEEE Power and Energy Society General Meeting (PESGM)
Local coordinator, 2019 ACM/IEEE Cyber-Physical System and Internet-of-Things (CPS-IoT) Week
Local arrangement chair, 2018 International Symposium on Foundations & Practice of Security (FPS)
Talks/Seminars
2023-07-05: Invited talk on "Applied Artificial Intelligence for Smart Grid Security" at Monash University, Australia
2023-04-28: Invited seminar on "The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Smart Grid Security" at Clarkson University, USA
2023-03-21: Invited seminar on "AI-based Smart Technologies in Smart Grid Security" for the University of Delaware, USA (online)
2022-07-27: Invited seminar on "Applied Machine Learning for Smart Grids" at Università della Calabria, Italy
2022-02-24: Invited talk on "Machine Learning for Secure and Resilient Cyber-Physical Systems" for Ericsson Global AI Accelerator, Montreal (online)
2021-08-04: Invited seminar on "Not Your Average Guide to Cyber-Physical Security Research" for Zhejiang University, China (online)
2021-02-20: Panel discussion on "Computing Security, Trust, and Privacy in a Hyperconnected World" at APSIPA U.S. Local Chapter meeting (online) [link]
2020-08-06: Panel discussion on "Cybersecurity in Grid Modernization: Opportunities and Challenges for Machine Learning" for the IEEE Power and Energy Society General Meeting 2020 (online) [link]