Justin Busch, President
Justin Busch is the President of Step 3 Systems. In this capacity, he is responsible for guiding the company's research in computational linguistics and artificial intelligence, as well as raising capital and overseeing day-to-day operations.
Prior to founding Step 3 Systems, Mr. Busch was a computational linguist at Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), a Fortune 500 firm based in San Diego, CA. Mr. Busch worked for SAIC from June 1999 to June 2007, and served in a variety of roles which prepared him for his efforts at Step 3 Systems.
From 1999 to 2002, Mr. Busch was involved in the development of a concept-based search engine as an outgrowth of research performed for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). In this capacity, Mr. Busch was a key member of the research team, which earned three U.S. patents for its work, as well as the lead inventor of the parser which formed the core technology for the search engine.
From 2002 to 2004, Mr. Busch worked on the Advanced Question-Answering for Intelligence (AQUAINT) program for the Intelligence Community Disruptive Technology Office (then known as the Advanced Research and Development Activity Office). In that role, he co-led the development of a large ontology (a structured dictionary used in artificial intelligence applications) of weapons of mass destruction. This experience gave him considerable insight into the difficulties analysts face in rating the credibility of information when given large amounts of data and limited amounts of time for research.
In 2005, Mr. Busch co-authored the winning proposal for COMPASS, a 5-year/$75 million project of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to modernize their IT systems. From 2005 to 2007, Mr. Busch served as a software architect on the COMPASS project. Since June 2007, Mr. Busch has served full-time as President of Step 3 Systems, Inc.
Mr. Busch holds a bachelor's degree magna cum laude in linguistics from Claremont McKenna College, where he achieved admission to the Phi Beta Kappa honor society, and a master's degree in computational linguistics from the University of Southern California.