Rômulo Meira-Góes

Current Institution: Carnegie Mellon University

Email: romulo@cmu.edu

Bio: Rômulo Meira-Góes is a post-doctoral associate with joint appointments at Carnegie Mellon University in the Institute for Software Research and at the University of Michigan in Electrical and Computer Engineering. He received a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Michigan in 2020, an M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan in 2017, and a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná-Curitiba in 2015. Rômulo’s work has been recognized by the International Federation of Automatic Control in the Workshop of Discrete Event Systems. His research interests include supervisory control of discrete event systems, formal methods, and game theory, specifically their application in cyber security of cyber-physical systems.

Abstract: Securing the next generation of critical infrastructure systems

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) provide the foundation for our critical infrastructure systems, such as energy, transportation, and manufacturing. While they are designed to safely operate even in the presence of intermittent sensor and actuator faults, typically their design does not consider possible malicious manipulation of sensor readings and actuator commands which can undermine these systems’ safety. To help engineers detect and address data-integrity vulnerabilities in CPS, I created a general control framework that automatically analyzes as well as synthesizes secure-by-construction controllers against these vulnerabilities. I have applied this control framework to analyze realistic case studies, such as a water treatment testbed and an aircraft power distribution testbed where I detected and addressed several data-integrity vulnerabilities in these systems. This formal approach can improve the security of the next generation of critical infrastructure systems by reducing vulnerabilities to data-integrity attacks.