You can hear about applying bio-inspired design to improve the resilience of power grids with Texas A&M Engineering’s podcast SoundBytes Season 1 Episode 29. It was also featured with ASME “How the Food Web Can Keep the Electricity Flowing” (Sep 29, 2020 by Jean Thilmany) and “How Food Webs May Improve Electric Grids” (Dec 5, 2022 by Michael Abrams), as well as Texas A&M’s College of Engineering “Pursuing greater resilience through nature-inspired power grids” and “Nature’s resilience inspires an improved power grid.”

This work started with a seed grant from Texas A&M University’s Energy Institute and is partially supported by funding and a collaboration with Sandia National Lab that is looking at cyber-physical power systems and a grant by the DOE.

Cyber-Physical Power Systems:

(2025) Huo, X., J. Leiden, *E. Payne, A. Layton, and K. Davis. “Cyber-Physical Intrusion Response: The Role of AI in Resilient Power System Operation.” Oxford Energy Forum. May 2025, Issue 145.

(2025) *Payne, E., S. Sun, S. Hossain-McKenzie, N. Jacobs, K. Davis, A. Layton. “Utilizing Bio-Inspired Metrics for Real-Time Detection of Denial-of-Service Attacks.” 25th Annual Conference on Systems Engineering Research (CSER). Long Beach, CA, USA.

(2025) *Payne, E., S. Hossain-McKenzie, N. Jacobs, K. Davis, A. Layton. “BiOpCPS: A Bio-inspired Method for Resilient Cyber-Physical Power System Interface Optimization.” 25th Annual Conference on Systems Engineering Research (CSER). Long Beach, CA, USA.

(2024) *Payne, E., S. Hossain-McKenzie, N. Jacobs, K. Davis and A. Layton, “Analyzing Cyber-Physical Modularity and Interdependence Using Bio-Inspired Graph Modeling.” IEEE Access. DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2024.3450368

(2024) Sun, S., H. Huang, *E. Payne, S. Hossain-McKenzie, N. Jacobs, H. Vincent Poor, A. Layton, and K. Davis. “A Graph Embedding-Based Approach for Automatic Cyber-Physical Power System Risk Assessment to Prevent and Mitigate Threats at Scale.” The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) Cyber-Physical Systems: Theory & Applications. DOI: 10.1049/cps2.12097

(2024) *Chatterjee, A., H. Huang, R. Malak, K. Davis, and A. Layton. “Extending Ecological Network Analysis to Design Resilient Cyber-Physical System of Systems.” IEEE Open Journal of Systems Engineering. DOI: 10.1109/OJSE.2024.3368921

(2024) Jacobs, N., S. Hossain-McKenzie, S. Sun, *E. Payne, A. Summers, L. Al Homoud, A. Layton, K. Davis, and C. Goes. “Leveraging Clustering Techniques for Cyber-Physical System Analysis to Enhance Disturbance Characterization.” The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) Cyber-Physical Systems: Theory & Applications. 1-15. DOI: 10.1049/cps2.12087

(2024) *Payne, E.; Sun, S.; Layton, A.; Davis, K.; Hossain-McKenzie, S.; Jacobs, N. “Insight Into Cyber Information Flow Interdependencies Using Bio-inspired Topologies.” 58th Annual Conference on Information Sciences & Systems. Princeton, NJ, USA.

(2023) Sun, S.; *Payne, E.; Layton, A.; Davis, K.; Hossain-McKenzie, S.; Jacobs, N. “Bioinspired and AI DeepWalk Based Approach to Understand Cyber-Physical Interdependencies of Power Grid Infrastructure.” North American Power Symposium (NAPS). Asheville, NC, USA.

(2023) Hossain-McKenzie, S.; N. Jacobs; A. Summers; *A. Chatterjee; A. Layton; K. Davis; H. Huang. “Toward the Characterization of Cyber-Physical System Interdependencies in the Electric Grid.” Power and Energy Conference at Illinois (PECI). Urbana-Champaign, IL, USA. DOI: 10.1109/PECI57361.2023.10197709

(2021) *Chatterjee, A.; Huang, H.; Davis, K.; Layton, A. “A Multigraph Modeling Approach to Enable Ecological Network Analysis of Cyber Physical Power Networks.” 2021 IEEE International Conference on Communications, Control, and Computing Technologies for Smart Grids (SmartGridComm) – Control and Operations for Smart Grids Symposium. Aachen, Germany. (virtual due to COVID-19) DOI: 10.1109/SmartGridComm51999.2021.9631989

(2021) Huang, H.; *Chatterjee, A.; Davis, K.; Layton, A. “An Investigation into Ecological Network Analysis for Cyber-Physical Power Systems.” 2021 IEEE International Conference on Communications, Control, and Computing Technologies for Smart Grids (SmartGridComm) – Cyber Security and Privacy Symposium. Aachen, Germany. (virtual due to COVID-19) DOI: 10.1109/SmartGridComm51999.2021.9632310

(2019) *Chatterjee, A.; A. Layton. Bio-Inspired Human Network Design: Multi-Currency Robustness Metric Formulation Inspired By Ecological Network Analysis. ASME International Design Engineering Technical Conferences (IDETC). Anaheim, CA.