The scientist who helped originate the field, still leading it.
Dr. Joseph Saleh's doctoral research produced early architectures for goal-directed reasoning that anticipated principles now central to modern agentic AI — developed in direct collaboration with Dr. Judea Pearl, recipient of the 2011 Turing Award. Over four decades, that foundation has carried through defense platforms, financial systems, and space programs, and now leads Tetrax Corporation.
The inventions this company is built on.
Goal-Directed Decision Structuring System — co-developed with Dr. Judea Pearl and Dr. Antonio Leal, formulating the core architecture for back-traversing goal-directed graphs. Published in IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, this work anticipated principles now central to agentic AI and automated planning.
Issue-Driven Elicitation Algorithm — Dr. Saleh's Ph.D. dissertation (UCLA, 1980), developing methods for automated decision-problem structuring under severe uncertainty and incomplete operational intelligence.
A mathematical foundation for back-traversing goal-directed graphs, demonstrating the structural and computational advantages of goal-directed graph traversal over traditional decision trees and probability calculus.
From cognitive systems research to founding and leading four companies.
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UCLA Cognitive Systems Laboratory & NIRTBegan as a systems engineer and post-graduate research engineer, conducting foundational research in cognitive architectures and automated planning directly alongside Dr. Judea Pearl.
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Perceptronics, Inc. — Director, Decision Support SystemsDirected scientific and engineering divisions building AI-driven command-and-control, anti-submarine warfare, and tactical decision systems, securing and managing research contracts funded by DARPA, ONR, NTEC, and the U.S. Marine Corps.
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Citicorp Transaction Technology, Inc. — Senior Vice President & Advanced Project ManagerLed strategic technical management for Citicorp's next-generation financial automation platforms, architecting the Customer Information Terminal (CIT) product specification, functional design, and system design.
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First Global Financial Corporation — Founder & CEOFounded and led a financial technology enterprise, applying decision-science architectures directly inside a financial organization.
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Decision Support Industries, Inc. (DSI) — Founder & PresidentFounded a specialized AI R&D consultancy delivering decision-aiding architectures to government agencies and corporate clients, and produced the original technical research series on goal-directed decision graphs and causal calculus.
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Tetrax Corporation — Cofounder, CEO & Principal ScientistToday, Tetrax carries this work forward as a DSI company — applying four decades of decision science to AI integration across enterprise, financial, government, and aerospace organizations.
Education
- Ph.D., Computer ScienceData Analysis & Decision Methodology — University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
- M.S., Computer ScienceArtificial Intelligence — University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
- B.S., Electrical EngineeringDigital Systems & Computer Design — Arya-Mehr University of Technology
Chairships, honors & affiliations
- General ChairmanThird Annual Artificial Intelligence & Advanced Technology Conference (KIPS)
- NVIDIA Development Partner
- Member, Honor Society in Computing SciencesUpsilon Pi Epsilon
- Member, Who's Who in Finance and Industry
- Member, Society for Applied Learning Technology (SALT)