University of Houston
CYBER-CARE — the Transportation Cybersecurity Center for Advanced Research and Education — is a U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) Tier 1 University Transportation Center (UTC). The department is supporting it with a $2 million grant for its first year, with total anticipated federal funding of $10 million over five years, according to a news release.
The center’s director is Yunpeng “Jack” Zhang, an associate professor in the Department of Information and Logistics Technology.
“Our goal is to make our intelligent transportation system (ITS) safer for all road users. That aligns well with the USDOT’s strategic goal of improving safety,” Zhang said in the statement. “We also will promote interdisciplinary research and education across the transportation and cybersecurity domains.”
The center is a consortium including Rice University; Texas A&M University at Corpus Christi; Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University; the University of Cincinnati; and the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.
The teams are tasked with building a knowledge base and exploring advanced theories of how to best mitigate impacts of large-scale cyber attacks on transportation infrastructure.
CYBER-CARE has four goals:
- Protecting vehicle control systems that perform safety-critical functions
- Detecting and responding to potential cyber incidents involving U.S. traffic networks
- Building a framework that incorporates cyber resilience and enables rapid recovery after cyber incidents
- Disseminating information as a resource in the development of industry-wide best practices
“What we learn from the CYBER-CARE research projects will help inform policy decisions and allocation of public resources. We are in a position to accelerate industry collaboration, foster new technologies and provide industry professionals with the skills and career development to become leaders in their fields,” Zhang said.
