Prof. Dr. Boris Stilman

Dr. Boris Stilman is now with the University of Colorado at Denver, USA and he is the Chairman & CEO of STILMAN Advanced Strategies, LLC.

In 1972-1988, in Moscow, USSR, he was involved in the advanced research project PIONEER led by a former 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 has never played complete chess games, it solved a number of complex endgames and positions from the games of World Chess Champions. This project has never been finished, however, based on these experiences over a number of years, in Moscow, I developed experimental and mathematical foundations of the new approach to search problems in Artificial Intelligence. In 1990-91, while at McGill University, Montreal, Canada, based on this approach, I originated Linguistic Geometry (LG), a new theory for solving abstract board games. LG allows us to overcome combinatorial explosion by changing the paradigm from search to construction. It is scalable to solving complex real world problems that are considered intractable by conventional approaches.

Since 1991, I 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 I (with a group of scientists and engineers) founded STILMAN Advanced Strategies, LLC (STILMAN). Since then, I combine my professorship at UCD with my leadership role of Chairman & CEO at STILMAN. A growing number of applications of LG developed at STILMAN have passed comprehensive testing and are currently being transitioned to the real world command and control systems in the USA. The LG software is currently considered vital for the national defense in USA and UK.

Out of the 30 LG-based projects that STILMAN completed, three projects with DARPA are in a class of its own. They are Joint Force Air Component Commander (JFACC, 1999-2001), Force Multiplyers (2005-06), and Real Time Adversarial Intelligence and Decision Making (RAID, 2004-08). Out of these three, RAID was especially successful. STILMAN developed the LG-RAID software generating in real time 4-hour predictive courses of action for the urban combat (in Bagdad). The efficacy and sophistication of these courses of action exceeded consistently those developed by the staff members. Based on the results of the RAID project and six simulation and live exercises, the US Army and DARPA granted a series of awards for transition of LG-RAID to the US Army. Currently, a growing number of the Army acquisition programs deploy this technology. They include
-- Stryker Embedded Training System Software (ETSS),
-- FBCB2 (Force XXI Battle Command Brigade and Below),
-- CPoF (Command Post of the Future),
-- DCGS-A (Digital Common Ground System - Army), etc.

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12 years of highly successful application of LG led us to believe that LG is a lot more fundamental than simply yet another mathematical theory of efficient wargaming. Every LG application generated new ideas that experts evaluated as brilliant. We believe that we discovered a mathematical model of human thinking about armed conflict, a mental reality that existed for thousands of years. The game of chess was invented 1.5-2 thousand years ago as a formal gaming model of ancient wars. In our case, chess served as a means for discovering human methodology of efficient warfare. To prove this hypothesis we will demonstrate power of LG on wars happened at times when the game of chess had yet to be invented. Soon, LG-based software will demonstrate what-if analysis of the battles on behalf of Alexander the Great, Hannibal, and Julius Caesar.

I published several books (including "Linguistic Geometry: From Search to Construction") and contributions to books, and over 200 research papers. I was a recipient of numerous R&D awards, including the top research awards at UC Denver, grants from the former USSR Academy of Sciences, substantial grants from the US government agencies such as major multiple awards from US Dept of Energy, DARPA, US Army, US Air Force, etc.; Ministry of Defence of UK; from the world leading contractors such as Boeing (many projects, USA), Rockwell (USA), BAE Systems (UK), SELEX Galileo/ Finmeccanica (Italy-UK) and Fujitsu (Japan).

More information about the history of LG and projects developed at STILMAN can be found in my resume at
www.stilman-strategies.com/bstilman/
Even more details can be found in the brochure "Linguistic Geometry Tools: LG-PACKAGE" and in the 8 movies (recorded software demos) downloadable from the STILMAN's web site:
www.stilman-strategies.com
go to "Demos"