Yiheng Feng, Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering and Assistant Director of the Center for Road Safety (CRS), has received the National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award to fund his research investigating the cybersecurity problem in next-generation transportation infrastructure. The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program is a Foundation-wide activity that offers the National Science Foundation's most prestigious awards in support of early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization.

This CAREER grant establishes an integrated research and education plan to systematically investigate the cybersecurity problem in next-generation transportation infrastructure, which is envisioned to be equipped with advanced sensors, communication systems, and edge computing capabilities to provide safer and more efficient traffic management strategies. Besides all the benefits, these new cyber components also open a door for cyberattacks. Improvements cannot be realized unless the transportation infrastructure is secured in cyberspace. Toward this goal, this project studies the cybersecurity of next-generation transportation infrastructure by conducting security analysis, proposing defense solutions, and evaluating system performance under cyber risks. The results can help public agencies design security standards and policies, and prioritize deployment of limited defense resources to more critical locations and attack scenarios.

Dr. Feng received his Ph.D. from the Department of Systems and Industrial Engineering at the University of Arizona. His research areas include connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) and smart transportation infrastructure, with a focus on cooperative driving automation and transportation system cybersecurity. He has served as PI and Co-PI in many research projects funded by NSF, USDOT, USDOE, and state DOTs. His work has appeared in a number of top transportation journals and security conferences, and he serves as an editor of multiple journals. He is a member of the Traffic Signal Systems Committee (ACP25) at TRB and co-chair of the Simulation Subcommittee, and received the best paper award from INFORMS in 2021.

This project investigates the cybersecurity of next-generation transportation infrastructure that is equipped with advanced sensors, communication systems, and edge computing devices. A fundamental and general attack surface that may influence the system performance is the data spoofing attacks launched towards the V2X communication system (1) and sensors (2).