James Korris, President and CEO of Creative Technologies Inc. (CTI), is a pioneer of the current trend in game-based simulation for military training. He is widely known for his service as Creative Director of the US Army?s virtual reality institute (Institute for Creative Technologies), from its establishment in 1999 until October 2006.

This experience, coupled with Korris? vision, led to the founding of CTI, where the CTI team has produced award-winning simulation products including a truck-mounted, motion-platform demonstrator for the Army?s Future Combat Systems program and trainers for Close Air Support, and Call for Fire, along with desktop cognitive applications for bilateral negotiations, Squad, Platoon and Company leadership, and threat indicator identification. Korris recently led a CTI effort to develop a next-generation Close Air Support/Call for Fire training capability, along with mobile platform applications. Current efforts include groundbreaking games for training in the Intelligence Community.

Prior to founding CTI, Korris led the development of Full Spectrum Warrior, the first military application developed for the Xbox, along with desktop applications for Full Spectrum Command and Leader. His team captured the DoD 2006 Modeling and Simulation award for training with Every Soldier: A Sensor Simulation. His work was also recognized by USJFCOM for the Joint Fires & Effects Trainer System as the highest-rated Closer Air Support simulation trainer in the world.

In 2007, Korris was honored with an appointment by the Secretary of the Navy to serve as a member of the Naval Research Advisory Committee, the senior scientific advisory group to the Secretary of the Navy, the Chief of Naval Operations, Commandant of the Marine Corps and the Chief of Naval Research. He served for four years (2007-2011).

Korris came to the defense realm following a career in the entertainment industry, working as a creative executive at Universal Television and producing at Ron Howard?s Imagine Films. A member of the Writers Guild of America and the Writers Guild of Canada, Korris has written for both motion pictures and television.

Korris holds a BA from Yale and an MBA with distinction at the Harvard Business School.

Stephanie Granato is a co-founder of Creative Technologies Inc. She is the Chief Operating Officer, General Counsel and majority shareholder of CTI.

Granato has served as Program Manager on numerous CTI projects including a re-conceptualization of BAE?s reconfigurable Vehicle Crew Trainer, Boeing?s Immersive Integrated Training Environment Demonstration and an organizational analysis of BRAC impact for the Fires Center of Excellence at Fort Sill.

A graduate of Yale Law School, Granato practiced law with Simpson, Thatcher & Bartlett in New York and regional and international firms in Los Angeles before joining CTI. Prior to law school, Granato served as an analyst for Houlihan Lokey Howard & Zukin in Los Angeles where she designed financial models and valued securities of private companies.

Granato earned her master?s degree from the London School of Economics, and her undergraduate degree from the University of California at Los Angeles, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She is admitted to the bar in California, New York, Washington, D.C. and Connecticut.

Dr. Jim Blake, the Managing Member of J T Blake LLC, serves as CTI’s Senior Advisor. Dr. Blake began with CTI following his retirement as Program Executive Officer for Simulation, Training, and Instrumentation in June 2014. A dual-rated Master Army Aviator, Dr. Blake rose from Private to Colonel during his service in the U.S. Army. Working as a Senior Research Scientist at Texas A&M, Dr. Blake had his first experiences with the CTI leadership team at the Army’s Institute for Creative Technologies in Los Angeles.

Dr. Blake is a graduate of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, the Defense Systems Management College, and the U.S. Army War College. His formal education includes a B.S. degree in Accounting from the University of Tampa, an M.S. degree in Systems Engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School, and a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from Duke University.

Todd Paulsen serves as a Senior Analyst and Director of Training at CTI. In these roles he draws on more than 15 years of experience as a military instructor. His extensive military expertise includes intelligence, combat infantry, CAS, C2, fire support, and air defense, and his exemplary subject matter expertise provides sound analysis.

Paulsen was a member of the original JFETS design and development team, while continuing to shape requirements driving the emerging CFFT research agenda. He has experience using most Fires-related simulations for training Joint Forward Observers and Joint Terminal Attack Controllers, including the Call-For-Fire Trainer, the Deployable Virtual Training Environment, Forward Observer PC Simulator, VBS Fires, OneSAF, JSAF, General Simulator and JFETS.

Paulsen has participated in various research efforts for industry and government, including the evaluation of emerging technologies, assorted intelligence investigations, training support trend analysis, and AI assessment. Paulsen?s perspective and academic grounding is guided by his combat experience.

Paulsen earned his BA in Biochemistry from Occidental College and an MS of Strategic Intelligence from the National Defense Intelligence College at the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Dr. Mantzaris is a PhD statistician/data scientist with a broad set of interests and skills. With 62 peer-reviewed publications in AI/ML and a faculty appointment at the University of Central Florida, he has been an AI/ML expert and practitioner since earning his Ph.D. in 2011. 

Selected publications:

Pho, Patrick, and Alexander V. Mantzaris. “reg-sgc: An open-source software for regularized Simple Graph Convolution.” SoftwareX 21 (2023): 101293.  

Domenikos, George-Rafael, and Alexander V. Mantzaris. “A model simulation of political segmentation through an estimation of the entropy.” Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment 2022, no. 9 (2022): 093401.  

Jasser, Jasser, Ivan Garibay, Steve Scheinert, and Alexander V. Mantzaris. “Controversial information spreads faster and further than non-controversial information in Reddit.” Journal of Computational Social Science 5, no. 1 (2022): 111-122.  

Rajabi, Amirarsalan, Alexander V. Mantzaris, Ece C. Mutlu, and Ozlem O. Garibay. “Investigating dynamics of COVID-19 spread and containment with agent-based modeling.” Applied Sciences 11, no. 12 (2021): 5367 

Travis has navigated the crossroads of technological disruption and learning innovation for over two decades, starting with the digital upheaval which reshaped the music industry. This formative experience cemented his belief in the constancy of change, a principle guiding his multifaceted career through entertainment, military simulation and training, and educational technology.

At Talespin, Falstad  led the Learning Experience Design team to create VR-based training modules, authoring tools, and ML/Generative AI research prototypes. Travis and his team were instrumental in developing a skills ontology to measure and assess performance for learners while mapping skills to learning content, companies, industries, roles, and more.  His efforts have consistently pushed the boundaries of learning, delivering award-winning experiences to Fortune 500 clients and redefining professional development through technology.

His tenure at EA Mobile, as Marketing Director during the pivotal shift to free-to-play models and the rise of the Apple App Store, showcased his ability to navigate and capitalize on technological trends, guiding his team to develop four groundbreaking titles for the new platform.

Beyond entertainment and commercial success, Falstad’s commitment to leveraging new technology for breakthroughs in the way people learn is evident in “Missing,” a game under the U.S. Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) Sirius Program. Featured in Harvard Business Review, the New York Times, this three-part adventure game significantly improved the ability of intelligence analysts to identify and mitigate cognitive biases. His work with the Fires Center of Excellence at Ft. Sill, developing mobile training applications, underscores his dedication to enhancing military training and operational readiness through innovation.

Falstad’s journey from the early days of digital disruption to the forefront of learning technology innovation embodies a deep understanding of how to harness change for growth and development. His career is a testament to the power of adaptive thinking and the importance of preparing businesses and individuals for the challenges and opportunities of the future.