As a fellow researcher in the SHURE-Grid program, my name is Aidan Gresko. I am part of the SHURE-Grid fellowship program, working on a project with three other team members. The project involves studying an industrial facility such as a power plant or a water treatment facility. Our project focuses on a specific event that occurred in Ukraine during the year 2015, in which Russian hackers created a power grid attack to disrupt the power infrastructure. I am grateful for the guidance and support of my mentors, Dr. Mai Abdelhakim ([maia@pitt.edu](mailto:maia@pitt.edu)) and Dr. Brandon Grainger ([bmg10@pitt.edu](mailto:bmg10@pitt.edu)). They are assisting my group and me in researching and providing adequate information for our final presentation to the INL research organization. There are several reasons as to why this research is important. One reason is that this attack could happen to the United States' power grid, which would cause devastating damage to our infrastructure. My group and my research aim to help find vulnerabilities in the use cases' situation (the Ukraine attack) and identify any potential risks in the USA's power infrastructure. After identifying any potential risks, we will provide countermeasures that can be presented to other power systems and even teach other universities. The main purpose is to implement CIE (Cyber-Informed Engineering) principles into infrastructure systems to enforce protections against cyber-attacks on these important systems.

One of my primary goals is to gain research experience and develop teamwork skills, as these will be essential to my future success. I hope to one day be able to assist in developing computer components such as CPUs, GPUs, RAM, etc. This summer fellowship should provide me with some experience in working with a group and researching different topics. This fellowship is a great opportunity and starting point for experiencing certain goals related to your fellowship program. My fellowship program is SHURE-Grid as mentioned above, so this will provide experience in research and group work.

My major is currently Computer Engineering, and I am a rising senior hoping to graduate in May of 2025. I do not have experience in internship/fellowship programs, but being in this fellowship will provide me with that experience, which should make me more competitive in the job/internship market. Some of my skills include programming primarily in C++ and Python. Other skills that I picked up during this fellowship program include gathering information from technical documentation and applying that information to presentations to explain to other researchers and professors. I do have some external experience outside of research and curriculums, including working with computers and different operating systems, so I believe that could be another path of mine in finding an IT type of job in the future. Overall, I am satisfied with this fellowship program and hope to gain many more experiences in the near future through my career.