University of Arkansas Honors Student, Grace Harding, next to her research poster, with Professor Kevin Jin (left), and lab mates Max Thursby (center), and Kevin Zheng (right), who came to support her work.
Author: Grace Harding | Major: Computer Engineering – Cybersecurity | Semester: Fall 2025
My name is Grace Harding, a Computer Engineering Major with a Mathematics Minor at the University of Arkansas. Over the past several months, I have been working towards completing my Honors Thesis, and in the process of that work, have been able to publish my first conference paper: Self-Healing PMU Networks Using Data Plane Programmable Switches. My paper details a system that I’ve created with the support of Professor Kevin Jin. It introduces a novel approach to increasing the reliability of observation systems for critical infrastructure. While there are systems in place to observe critical systems, like power grids, they are susceptible to failures from routine faults, severe weather, and cyberattacks. The system I’ve created uses a specialized technology, software-defined networking, to enable the observation network to heal itself from these failures in real time.
On November 17th-19th, 2025, I was given the opportunity to present my work at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ Design Methodologies Conference. It should have been a decidedly nerve-wracking experience. I had never been to a conference before, and now I would need to show what I had spent the last several months of my life working on to peers, senior researchers, and field professionals. Instead of being nervous, though, I was mostly excited; I had the good luck of the conference being in Fayetteville, so even when things went wrong – like learning my poster hadn’t been printed the morning of the 17th – my support network was still close enough to catch me if I made a mistake.
My poster session was at lunchtime on the first day, and though I’m sure the talks that morning were excellent, I didn’t get to see many of them due to the aforementioned poster problem. I managed to get it sorted, though, and was ready by the time my poster session came around. A note to any future Honors College Researchers: unless your conference is in town and you mother has access to an architectural plotter capable of spitting out a 48×36”, high-resolution, full-color poster in 10 minutes, I would really recommend getting your poster printed at least a week before you leave, so that you have time to submit another request in case something goes wrong with the first one.
The poster presentation itself was probably the most fun I had at the conference; I had worked hard on this, and was very excited to get to share it. I got to speak to professors from universities around the world, students who were working on similar projects, and industry professionals who might one day be the ones to see the impact of my work. While, for the most part, people weren’t familiar enough with my topic to provide deep insight, many of the questions I received helped to direct my future work, which will eventually be published in my Honors Thesis.
Beyond my own work at the conference, I got to attend many talks, and participate in the conference’s AI challenge. While a lot of the talks were a little outside of my wheelhouse, involving electrical systems I don’t see often as a computer engineer, getting to learn about cutting edge technology from the people who developed it was amazing; 10/10, would recommend. Before attending, I had thought that the conference would be mostly boring: sitting through presentations that weren’t relevant to my research area, eating weird hotel food, and the like. Now that I’ve experienced it for myself, though, I really hope that I can attend another one again soon, even if I don’t have anything to present myself.
Besides being privy to awesome new research, the conference also provided me with two other things: connections and direction for where my research is going in the future. I was able to meet with many amazing people, but in particular, I was able to get in contact with someone from a university research program, and with help from Dr. Jin was able to secure some new technology that will be used as the testbed for my next research project.
This next semester, I will be studying abroad in Denmark, which is a little bit far from my home lab; when I return, though, I will be doing it as a Distinguished Doctoral Fellow at the University of Arkansas, where I plan to utilize the benefits I’ve gained from this conference on continued research efforts. I’d like to thank my labmates who worked alongside me, the Honors College, who has supported me both financially and with the program that allowed me to begin research here in the first place, and Dr. Kevin Jin, who has been the best supporter and mentor I could ask for.