The Department of Data Science (DS) at City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK) hosted a DS Distinguished Seminar featuring Prof. Dr. Sebastian Lehnhoff, Full Professor of Energy Informatics at the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, Germany. Prof. Lehnhoff delivered a talk on AI-based trust assessment and energy system resilience.
Prof. Lehnhoff presented a forward-looking vision of how future energy systems can achieve resilience through intelligent, trust-aware, and adaptive operation. As energy infrastructures become increasingly digital, decentralized, and interconnected, conventional approaches to system monitoring and control are no longer sufficient to address emerging uncertainties and cyber-physical risks. The talk introduced a trust-centric perspective that extends traditional state estimation toward multidimensional trust assessment, together with Adversarial Resilience Learning (ARL)—an AI-based framework in which attacker and defender agents continuously learn within a shared digital twin environment. Through these approaches, AI can help uncover hidden vulnerabilities, enhance operational decision-making, and enable energy systems to dynamically adapt to evolving threats and uncertain conditions. Overall, the seminar highlighted a broader vision of integrating artificial intelligence, digital twins, and trust mechanisms to shape the next generation of resilient, autonomous, and sustainable energy systems.
Prof. Lehnhoff is Chairman of the Board of the OFFIS Institute for Information Technology and Spokesperson of the Executive Board of the Energy Research Centre of Lower Saxony. He is also an executive board member of openKONSEQUENZ eG, a member of the Supervisory Boards of TÜV NORD Systems GmbH & Co. KG and KoCoS Messtechnik AG, and a member of the German National Academy of Science and Engineering and the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. His work spans energy informatics, resilient cyber-physical energy systems, and digital transformation in the energy sector.
DS thanks Prof. Lehnhoff for his visit and for the engaging interaction with our faculty and students.