Dr. Boris Stilman

Dr. Stilman is the company's Chairman & CEO and a Co-founder of STILMAN. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the National Research Institute for Electrical Engineering (VNIIE), Moscow, USSR in 1984; M.S. in Mathematics (with honors) from Lomonosov Moscow State University (MGU) in 1972.

In 1972-1988, in Moscow, after graduation from MGU, Boris was involved in the advanced research project PIONEER led by a World Chess Champion Professor Mikhail Botvinnik. The goal of the project was to discover and formalize an approach utilized by the most advanced chess experts in solving chess problems almost without search. While program PIONEER had never played complete chess games, it solved a number of complex endgames and positions from the games of World Chess Champions. This project was never finished, however, based on these experiences over a number of years, in Moscow, Dr. Stilman developed experimental and mathematical foundations of the new approach to search problems in Artificial Intelligence. This was the topic of his Ph.D. dissertation that he defended in 1984.

In 1990-91, while at McGill University, Montreal, Canada, based on his research in Moscow, Dr. Stilman originated Linguistic Geometry (LG), a new theory for solving abstract board games (ABG). LG represents ABG as a hierarchy of formal languages (with controlled semantics) that change when the game moves from one state to the next. LG allows us to avoid combinatorial explosion by changing the paradigm from search to construction (from analysis to synthesis). It is scalable to solving complex real-world problems that are considered intractable by conventional approaches.

Since 1991, Dr. Stilman was developing the theory and applications of LG at the University of Colorado Denver (UC Denver). A leap in the development LG was made in 1999, when he (with a group of scientists and engineers) founded STILMAN Advanced Strategies, LLC (STILMAN). Since then, Dr. Stilman combined his professorship at UC Denver with his leadership role at STILMAN. After retiring from UC Denver as Professor Emeritus in 2018, he continued his R&D concurrently with STILMAN’s leadership. Since 2010, his research expanded into the area of Primary Language of the human brain (hypothesized originally by J. von Neumann in 1957).

Dr. Stilman published 2 books, including "Linguistic Geometry: From Search to Construction" by Kluwer (now Springer), 11 contributions to books, and over 200 research papers. He is a recipient of numerous R&D awards, including the top research awards at UC Denver, grants from the former USSR Academy of Sciences, substantial multiple awards from various agencies of the US Dept. of Defense, awards from Ministry of Defence of UK, and from the world leading defense contractors including Rockwell, Boeing, BAE Systems (US & UK), SELEX Galileo (UK) and Fujitsu (Japan).

More details can be found in Dr. Stilman’s resume.

Dr. Vlad Yakhnis

(Ph.D. in Mathematics/Computer Science, Cornell University, 1990) is VP Science & Technology, Chief Scientist, and a co-Founder of STILMAN. In the 90s, before joining STILMAN full time in 2002, Dr. Yakhnis has got substantial R&D experience at IBM, Sandia National Laboratories, and at Rockwell Science Center. His work is focused on representing various concepts, including military concepts, within formal LG models. He contributed to foundations and applications of LG, gaming algorithms, formal methods for software development, program correctness for concurrent and sequential programs, and validation of software requirements. He co-developed a new algorithm for generating finite memory winning strategies for a large class of infinite games. He served as an industry and defense operations liaison to STILMAN. He was instrumental in converting the industrial or military requirements into LG models to be implemented in software. He has 50 research publications. In the past, on a number of projects, Dr. Yakhnis served as an industry and defense operations liaison to STILMAN. During the DARPA JFACC project, he served as a focal point for integration of software from three different vendors, Rockwell Science Center, BBN, and Interna, with STILMAN software. Subsequently, in all US and UK projects, he served as a major link between SMEs, external and STILMAN software developers. He is a recipient of research awards including grants and contracts from DOE, DARPA, MDA, JFCOM, Rockwell Collins, Boeing, MoD (UK), BAE SYSTEMS (UK), SELEX (UK) and Fujitsu (Japan).

Dr. Oleg Umanskiy

(Ph. D. in Computer Science & Information Systems) is the Chief Software Architect at STILMAN. He was the leading developer of all the software implementations of LG-based AI. Most importantly, he led the development of all versions of LG-RAID and its integration with other systems. Dr. Umanskiy also received special recognition from DARPA, US Army, and other agencies for his leadership and creative technical solutions. He published 26 research papers including several journal papers and contributions to books. He is a recipient of research awards including grants and contracts from US Army, Navy, USMC, DOE, DARPA, MDA, JFCOM, Boeing, MoD (UK), BAE (US, UK), SELEX (UK).