Speaker Bios
Ankita Shukla, University of Nevada, Reno
From Cyber-AI to AI-Cyber: Can We Trust AI with the Keys?
Dr. Ankita Shukla is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR). Her research spans machine learning and computer vision, trustworthy and agentic AI, geometric and multimodal learning, and AI for science. She is particularly interested in building reliable and trustworthy AI systems for complex real-world applications spanning energy, nuclear science, healthcare, and scientific discovery.
Her work connects fundamental AI research with scientific and societal challenges in collaboration with national laboratories, government, industry, and academic partners. Prior to joining UNR, she was a postdoctoral researcher at Arizona State University and a Visiting Scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. She received her Ph.D. and Master’s degrees from IIIT-Delhi and has been recognized with the Oden Institute’s Rising Star in Computational and Data Sciences, the IIIT-Delhi Doctoral Dissertation Award, and Best Master’s Thesis Award.
Bertrum Carroll
Panel: Cyber-AI vs AI-Cyber
Bertrum Carroll, Jeffrey Fairbanks, Katrina Herweg, Stephanie Peterson, Bryan Faxel
Panel Moderator: Scotty Strachan
Bertrum Carroll is a seasoned Information Technology and Cybersecurity Executive. He has served ten years as a VP/CISO, guiding security strategy, enterprise risk management, and regulatory compliance while partnering with boards, executives, and technical teams. His background includes leading large scale security operations, building high-maturity
cybersecurity programs, and securing consumer-facing and mission-critical systems.
A Certified Internal Controls Architect and holder of top industry credentials including CISSP, CISM, CISA, CIPP/US, ISO 27001 Lead Auditor, ISO 42001 Auditor, and others. Bertrum is recognized for his ability to translate complex technical issues into clear business insights. His work has consistently improved organizational security posture, in areas which include third-party risk management, security operations, network security, application security, and cyber risk management.
Bertrum holds master’s degrees in Electrical Engineering and Administration, a Graduate Certificate in Cybersecurity, and a B.S. in Computer Science. A retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel, he brings a disciplined, mission focused approach to leadership. He is also an active mentor, board advisor, and industry contributor, who conducts public speaking on cybersecurity, risk, and emerging technologies.
Bryan Faxel
Panel: Cyber-AI vs AI-Cyber
Bertrum Carroll, Jeffrey Fairbanks, Katrina Herweg, Stephanie Peterson, Bryan Faxel
Panel Moderator: Scotty Strachan
Bryan Faxel leads Security Trust and Engineering at Ridgeline, where he focuses on building customer trust through strong cybersecurity capabilities and enabling responsible AI innovation while balancing risk and velocity. Bryan has been with Ridgeline, a cloud-native investment management platform, for seven years. Prior to Ridgeline, he spent 10 years at PwC in the audit practice, primarily serving investment management companies. Bryan is based in Reno, Nevada with his wife and two children.
C. Kerry Nemovicher, Crytica Security
From Cyber-AI to AI-Cyber: Can We Trust AI with the Keys?
Dr. Ankita Shukla is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR). Her research spans machine learning and computer vision, trustworthy and agentic AI, geometric and multimodal learning, and AI for science. She is particularly interested in building reliable and trustworthy AI systems for complex real-world applications spanning energy, nuclear science, healthcare, and scientific discovery.
Her work connects fundamental AI research with scientific and societal challenges in collaboration with national laboratories, government, industry, and academic partners. Prior to joining UNR, she was a postdoctoral researcher at Arizona State University and a Visiting Scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. She received her Ph.D. and Master’s degrees from IIIT-Delhi and has been recognized with the Oden Institute’s Rising Star in Computational and Data Sciences, the IIIT-Delhi Doctoral Dissertation Award, and Best Master’s Thesis Award.
Mark Precious and David DeLozier, CarbonHelix Cyber
Automation and AI: Level the Playing field for Defenders in 2026
Mark Precious and David DeLozier, co-founders at CarbonHelix Cyber, bring decades of combined experience in SOC operations, data protection, and cloud security.
CarbonHelix Cyber is a cybersecurity services and technology company delivering co-managed 24x7 SOC, MDR, and SIEM services. Its CarbonAI 2ndLook investigative intelligence platform applies AI responsibly to validate and investigate every alert, uncover attack patterns and emerging threats, and deliver actionable intelligence to security analysts. Reducing repetitive investigation while improving the consistency, depth, and speed of SOC operations.
Hao Xu, University of Nevada, Reno
Hijacked in Mid-Air: The Hidden Cyber Risks of Commercial and Consumer Drones
Dr. Hao Xu is the Ralph E. Hoeper Associate Professor in the School of Computing, Electrical, and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Nevada, Reno. He is an NSF CAREER Awardee and the UNR site director for the Department of War CREDIT+ Center of Excellence. His research focuses on reinforcement learning, AI, cybersecurity, cyber-physical systems and autonomous robotics. He has published more than 100 technical articles, with support from the Department of War, NSF, NASA and industry. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri-Rolla in 2012.
Harold Byun, BlueRock
Exploring Fiction, Reality, and Exploit Gaps in Agentic Runtime Security
Harold Byun is CEO of BlueRock, an agentic runtime security platform. He has over 25 years of experience in the security industry as both a practitioner and product leader. Prior to joining BlueRock, he held product leadership roles at ServiceNow, Skyhigh Networks, AppOmni, MobileIron, and Symantec. His career includes work in a number of security domains across agentic AI, security orchestration and automated response (SOAR), cloud access security broker (CASB), vuln management, governance risk and compliance (GRC), data loss prevention (DLP), encryption and data access monitoring. He holds a BA from Tufts University and an MBA from the Haas School of Business at the University of California along with several data security related patents.
Jeffrey Fairbanks
Panel: Cyber-AI vs AI-Cyber
Bertrum Carroll, Jeffrey Fairbanks, Katrina Herweg, Stephanie Peterson, Bryan Faxel
Panel Moderator: Scotty Strachan
Jeffrey Fairbanks is a cybersecurity threat analyst at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s (LLNL) Cyber Security Operations Center (CSOC). He began his LLNL career on the Infrastructure team as a Cyber Software Engineer, where he built critical end-to-end tooling to bolster CSOC effectiveness and support NNSA/DOE initiatives. He later transitioned to the Cyber Threat Intelligence and Research team. In his current role, Jeffrey focuses on threat hunting, alert development, and translating intelligence into actionable defenses.
Beyond his SOC duties, Jeffrey co-coordinates the Cyber Internship Outreach Network (CION), a program dedicated to recruiting and mentoring the next generation of cybersecurity talent at LLNL. He holds a PhD from Boise State University, which underpins his research-driven approach to identifying and countering emerging threats through the use of agentic AI.
Outside of work, Jeffrey enjoys rock climbing and golfing with his wife.
Katrina Herweg
Panel: Cyber-AI vs AI-Cyber
Bertrum Carroll, Jeffrey Fairbanks, Katrina Herweg, Stephanie Peterson, Bryan Faxel
Panel Moderator: Scotty Strachan
Katrina Herweg is a Cyber Security Engineer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), where she leads the Digital Forensics and Incident Response (DFIR) Team. Her team deploys and operationalizes leading EDR capabilities and enhances incident response tooling to protect critical assets against emerging threats. Katrina’s experience and education spans cybersecurity operations and software development, giving her a strong blend of operational and engineering expertise in support of the national security mission. She has led responses to high impact incidents, improved DFIR tool stacks, integrated advanced EDR telemetry, and contributes to broader cyber initiatives through the NNSA Center of Excellence and Bay Area cybersecurity working groups.
Scotty Strachan
Panel: Cyber-AI vs AI-Cyber
Bertrum Carroll, Jeffrey Fairbanks, Katrina Herweg, Stephanie Peterson, Bryan Faxel
Panel Moderator: Scotty Strachan
Scotty Strachan serves as Principal Research Engineer for the Nevada System of Higher Education. In this capacity, he develops strategy, technical solutions, and partnerships for effective, sustainable, and performant research-facing technology environments for Nevada’s faculty members and students. Scotty is currently PI or co-PI on over $30M in grant-funded projects across the Nevada higher-ed ecosystem, ranging from connecting mountain climate observatories to technology development in fire science to statewide cyberinfrastructure planning workshops. Scotty works closely with partners at the NevadaNet statewide high-speed optical network, the Nevada Seismological Laboratory, the Utah Education & Telehealth Network, and the Arizona Sun Corridor Network to develop regional “team science” support capabilities from a data networking perspective. Scotty is a Research Affiliate with the Department of Energy’s Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and he sits on boards and advisory panels for Internet2, The Quilt R&E Network Consortium, and NSF-EPSCoR programs in other states. Scotty remains passionate about developing healthy research-driven education ecosystems enabled by technology to advance innovative non-traditional academic pathways, student success, and valuable scientific outcomes for society.
Venkata Nambula, Viakoo
Architecting and Securing the Future: Navigating the AI + Cybersecurity Landscape
Venkata Nambula serves as Chief Technology Officer and Chief Information Security Officer at Viakoo, where he leads Engineering, Product Security, Information Security, and Cloud Operations. Driven by the conviction that security is enforced by architecture rather than policy, Venkata has positioned AI as a primary strategic medium for product innovation and execution, leveraging intelligent automation to protect and manage enterprise connected infrastructure at scale.
Venkata’s 25-year career in Silicon Valley spans foundational systems engineering to executive leadership at MobileIron, Brocade, Foundry, and NetContinuum. He holds a Master's in Computer Science from the University of Kentucky and a Bachelor's in Computer Science from the National Institute of Technology, India.
Outside of work, Venkata is a competitive runner with the West Valley Joggers & Striders, actively training for the California International Marathon, and volunteers as a judge for high school policy and debate competitions.
Victor Aldana, Microsoft
Securing the Future: Where AI and Cybersecurity Meet
Victor Aldana teaches Applied AI for Cybersecurity in UNLV's MS Cybersecurity program and works with enterprise customers on AI adoption at Microsoft. He serves as Education Director for ISSA Las Vegas and sits on the CyberSafeNV board. Whether the focus is using AI to strengthen defenses or securing the AI systems organizations are rushing to deploy, he turns both into practical steps teams can act on.