"Everything will be binary in the end. If it's not binary, it's not the end"
almost John Lennon

Charalambos Konstantinou is an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) and Affiliate Professor of Computer Science (CS). He is the Principal Investigator of the Secure Next Generation Resilient Systems Lab (SENTRY) and a member of the Resilient Computing and Cybersecurity Center (RC3) of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal, Saudi Arabia. His research interests are in secure, trustworthy, and resilient cyber-physical and embedded IoT systems. He is also interested in critical infrastructures security and resilience with special focus on smart grid technologies, renewable energy integration, and real-time simulation.

Education and Early Career

He received a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from New York University (NYU), NY, in 2018, and a Dipl.-Ing.-M.Eng. Degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), Greece, in 2012. Before joining KAUST in summer of 2021, he was an Assistant Professor with the Center for Advanced Power Systems (CAPS) at Florida State University (FSU) between 2018 and 2021.

Career Recognitions

Konstantinou has authored multiple articles in the IEEE/ACM transactions and conference proceedings and serves in the program committee of several international conferences. He is currently the Chair of the IEEE Task Force on Resilient and Secure Large-Scale Energy Internet Systems and the co-Chair of the IEEE Task Force on Cyber-Physical Interdependence for Power System Operation and Control. He is the recipient of the 2020 Myron Zucker Student-Faculty Grant Award from IEEE Foundation, the Southeastern Center for Electrical Engineering Education (SCEEE) Young Faculty Development Award 2019, and the best paper award at the International Conference on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI-SoC) 2018. He serves as an Associate Editor for the International Journal of Electrical Power & Energy Systems and IET Generation, Transmission & Distribution. He is a Senior Member of IEEE, a member of ACM, and an ACM Distinguished Speaker (2021-2024).

Why SENTRY?

Concerns about safety, efficiency, performance, robustness, and sustainability in several sectors including energy, avionics, and transportation have witnessed remarkable advances in automation, monitoring, and control over the past years. As a result, the integration of communication, information, and computation with physically engineered systems demands a thorough analysis of cyber-physical systems (CPS) to realize the targeted technological and economic metrics. However, the cyber-threat landscape on these critical CPS infrastructures seems to widen with increasing sophistication associated with the use of Internet-of-Things (IoT) despite significant benefits in terms of reliability and efficiency. The reason for this can be attributed to the advancements in information and communication technologies on the one hand and the inadequate level of security measures on legacy systems on the other hand. To address the growing threat to cyber-physical critical infrastructure, SENTRY lab's objective is generating high impact scholarly work towards a transformational development approach while redefining security concerns in the direction of resilient and robust metrics by developing cross-layer vulnerability analysis tools and systems algorithms. This contributes to preventing adverse cybersecurity effects from escalating into major failures and hence causing deterioration of cyber-dependent critical systems.

Why KAUST?

KAUST vision to serve as a beacon of knowledge enabling to explore curiosity-driven and goal-oriented research can make the difference in the life of many people. No other place in the world can assist scientists and engineers to perform groundbreaking research, thus pushing forward the boundaries of research in the cybersecurity and cyber-physical system aspect of science and engineering. Cybersecurity is the fastest growing sector in Saudi Arabia, and KAUST is a unique place to create high impact in both science and society.

Education Profile

  • Ph.D., Electrical Engineering,
    New York University (NYU), 2018
  • Diploma (Dipl.-Ing.-M.Eng.), Electrical and Computer Engineering,  
    National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), 2012

Selected Publications

Zografopoulos, I., & Konstantinou, C. (2022). Detection of Malicious Attacks in Autonomous Cyber-Physical Inverter-Based Microgrids. IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, 18(9), 5815–5826.
Handle
10754/673926
DOI
10.1109/TII.2021.3132131
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Konstantinou, C., & Anubi, O. M. (2022). Resilient Cyber-Physical Energy Systems Using Prior Information Based on Gaussian Process. IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, 18(3), 2160–2168. https://doi.org/10.1109/tii.2021.3099974
Handle
10754/670252
DOI
10.1109/TII.2021.3099974
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Xenofontos, C., Zografopoulos, I., Konstantinou, C., Jolfaei, A., Khan, M. K., & Choo, K.-K. R. (2022). Consumer, Commercial, and Industrial IoT (In)Security: Attack Taxonomy and Case Studies. IEEE Internet of Things Journal, 9(1), 199–221.
Handle
10754/669494
DOI
10.1109/JIOT.2021.3079916
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Kuruvila, A. P., Zografopoulos, I., Basu, K., & Konstantinou, C. (2021). Hardware-assisted detection of firmware attacks in inverter-based cyberphysical microgrids. International Journal of Electrical Power & Energy Systems, 132, 107150.
DOI
10.1016/j.ijepes.2021.107150
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Zografopoulos, I., Ospina, J., Liu, X., & Konstantinou, C. (2021). Cyber-Physical Energy Systems Security: Threat Modeling, Risk Assessment, Resources, Metrics, and Case Studies. IEEE Access, 9, 29775–29818.
Handle
10754/672979
DOI
10.1109/ACCESS.2021.3058403
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Zografopoulos, I., & Konstantinou, C. (2020). DERauth: A Battery-Based Authentication Scheme for Distributed Energy Resources. 2020 IEEE Computer Society Annual Symposium on VLSI (ISVLSI).
DOI
10.1109/ISVLSI49217.2020.00086
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Konstantinou, C. (2020). Cyber-Physical Systems Security Education Through Hands-on Lab Exercises. IEEE Design & Test, 37(6), 47–55. https://doi.org/10.1109/mdat.2020.3005365
DOI
10.1109/MDAT.2020.3005365
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Anubi, O. M., & Konstantinou, C. (2020). Enhanced Resilient State Estimation Using Data-Driven Auxiliary Models. IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, 16(1), 639–647. https://doi.org/10.1109/tii.2019.2924246
DOI
10.1109/TII.2019.2924246
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Konstantinou, C., Sazos, M., Musleh, A. S., Keliris, A., Al‐Durra, A., & Maniatakos, M. (2017). GPS spoofing effect on phase angle monitoring and control in a real‐time digital simulator‐based hardware‐in‐the‐loop environment. IET Cyber-Physical Systems: Theory & Applications, 2(4), 180–187. https://doi.org/10.1049/iet-cps.2017.0033
DOI
10.1049/iet-cps.2017.0033
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McLaughlin, S., Konstantinou, C., Wang, X., Davi, L., Sadeghi, A.-R., Maniatakos, M., & Karri, R. (2016). The Cybersecurity Landscape in Industrial Control Systems. Proceedings of the IEEE, 104(5), 1039–1057. https://doi.org/10.1109/jproc.2015.2512235
DOI
10.1109/JPROC.2015.2512235
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