(This is a photo of Dr. Nestler)
Dr. Nestler
Dr. Vincent Nestler is the Director of The AI Horizon, a national initiative dedicated to understanding the impact of artificial intelligence on the cybersecurity workforce. Supported in collaboration with the National Science Foundation’s NAIRR, he leads efforts to identify which cybersecurity roles will be affected by AI.
As Director of the Center for Cybersecurity and Artificial Intelligence at CSUSB, Dr. Nestler also spearheads workforce-ready education and serves as the Principal Investigator for XP Cyber (formerly known as the NICE Challenge Project), providing hands-on cybersecurity training to hundreds of institutions nationwide.
Additionally, he is currently an external red team member testing frontier models and is also a published author. A former U.S. Marine Corps Data Communications Officer, Dr. Nestler brings over 30 years of leadership, instructional design, and technical expertise to his work.
The Mission
The integration of AI into cybersecurity represents a fundamental transformation occurring at extraordinary speed. AI Horizon addresses the critical gap between rapid technological evolution and educational adaptation through a novel forecasting framework. This initiative will predict which cybersecurity tasks will be augmented by AI, replaced by AI, or remain human-driven, enabling educators to adapt curriculum with unprecedented agility. AI Horizon advances knowledge through a data-driven forecasting framework that systematically maps AI's transformation of cybersecurity domains and a novel three-committee implementation model that rapidly translates workforce insights into educational strategies.
This project uses resources provided through the National AI Research Resource (NAIRR) Pilot and implements innovative mechanisms for integrating NAIRR resources into cybersecurity research and education. By leveraging NAIRR pilot resources, AI Horizon addresses a critical national security imperative by creating a direct connection between emerging AI capabilities, cybersecurity research needs, and educational practices. The project will train about 1000 faculty members and 1000 students across 470 institutions. As a part of this project, researchers and educators will work together to identify cybersecurity tasks that can be replaced or augmented by AI, disseminate this knowledge at workshops and online training, and guide participants in requesting and using NAIRR resources to implement cybersecurity tasks that replace or augment human actions.