“Remember back in 2003 when overgrown trees hit a power line in Cleveland and cut electricity to 50 million people in two countries? Or how about the storm that disrupted service to 1.7 million customers in Australia in September after backup generators failed? A team of researchers from Vanderbilt, Washington State and North Carolina State universities are charged with reinventing and protecting America’s power grid, and they’re taking their first solutions on a demonstration tour. Stops include the 8th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Cyber-Physical Systems in Pittsburgh beginning April 18 and the 20th IEEE International Symposium on Real-Time Computing in Toronto beginning May 16. The idea is to build an underlying, open-source software platform to support decentralized applications that increase the power grid’s resilience and protect it from dangers ranging from terrorists to tree branches. The platform is also designed to quarantine problems while the rest of the system runs normally and to allow for seamless transition among wind and solar power, batteries, generators and traditional coal-fired and nuclear power plants as needed.”