Dr. Manuel Aparicio leads Saffron’s corporate vision and fundamental direction.

Prior to Saffron, Manuel Aparicio was Chief Scientist of the IBM Knowledge Management & Intelligent Agent Center. At IBM, he and Jim Fleming, Saffron Co-founder and President, worked on the commercialization of associative memories systems.  Aparicio also served on the Board of Directors for The Agent Society and the Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents, an international standards body. Aparicio is an evangelist for the application of associative memory-based systems, holds several patents for memory-based technology, and has published numerous papers and journal articles. He has over 20 years in machine learning and 10 years in the commercialization and industrial development of intelligent agents. Aparicio is an alumnus of the University of South Florida where he earned a Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology, with a focus on biologically based neuro-computing.

Visit Dr. Aparicio's professional blog that details his thoughts on memory-based entity analytics and related industries.

Dan Ariely – Member, Board of Directors

Professor Dan Ariely is the James B. Duke Professor of business administration with a secondary appointment in economics and a faculty member of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Duke University.

Previous appointments include the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Behavioral Economics, where Dan held a joint appointment between MIT's Program in Media Arts and Sciences and Sloan School of Management, and the principal investigator of the Lab's eRationality group and co-director of the Lab's SIMPLICITY consortium.

As a behavioral economist, Dan Ariely studies how people actually act in the marketplace, as opposed to how they should or would perform if they were completely rational.  His specific interests are in understanding the role of various factors—such as the range of options individuals face, the prices that they see, the pricing mechanisms that are used, the time that they have to make the decisions, the incentives for success and others—on consumers’ choices.  Dan has examined how these factors shape behavior in general and also in electronic marketplaces such as online auctions, web shopping, and online dating. 

Dan earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Tel Aviv University in 1991, master’s and doctorate degrees in cognitive psychology from the University of North Carolina in 1994 and 1996, and a doctorate in marketing from Duke University in 1998, the year he joined the MIT faculty, where he and his students try to take their findings of day-to-day irrationality and create software solutions for these shortcomings.

Dan has written extensively for journals in psychology, economics, and marketing and management research. Dan is the author of Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions (HarperCollins, February 2008) and is co-author of The Joy of Experimental Psychology. Studies in progress include “Does the Pursuit of Happiness Lead to Happiness?” “The Happy Hour Effect in Online Auctions,” “Self-Deception and Lying,” and “Learning from One’s Own Actions.” Dan serves on the editorial review board of a number of journals, including the Journal of Marketing Research, the Journal of Interactive Marketing, and the Journal of Consumer Research. Among his honors are the 1998 John A. Howard American Marketing Association Doctoral Dissertation Award, the 2000 Judgment and Decision Making Society’s Hillel Einhorn New Investigator Award, and the early contribution award from the society for consumer psychology in 2003. Dan is currently working on a new book titled Dining Without Crumbs: The Art of Eating Over the Sink.

Mr. Jim Fleming leads Saffron’s technical and strategic initiatives.

In 1999, Fleming and Aparicio left IBM and established Saffron Technology; applying their expertise towards more advanced, intelligent associative memory-based computing solutions for personalization in electronic commerce, query optimization, processing informatics for life sciences. Saffron’s breakthrough, a patented associative memory-based analysis and prediction capability, enabled the commercial application memory-based systems at scale. Prior to founding Saffron Technology, Fleming worked for IBM on agent-based learning technologies and security products. He also helped pioneer LAN-based e-mail systems while working as a technical lead at Lotus/cc:Mail. His interest in agent-based software formed while at cc:Mail working on rule-based systems in the early 1990s. He has also worked with Microsoft's PowerPoint division on writing slide imaging software. Fleming is an alumnus of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois where he earned his bachelor of science in computer science.

John M. Poindexter – Member, Board of Directors

Dr. John M. Poindexter, now a private consultant, most recently served as Director of the Information Awareness Office (IAO) at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).   IAO developed and demonstrated information technologies and systems to counter asymmetric threats by achieving total information awareness useful for preemption, national security warning and national security decision-making.  In addition he initiated research on privacy protection.  As Director, Dr. Poindexter established the new office, managed the technical and financial aspects of the Office’s ongoing projects and worked to identify revolutionary new projects within the Office’s mission.  He now serves on the Board of Directors of Saffron Technology, an innovative computer software company which produces associative memory applications.

Prior to coming to DARPA, Dr. Poindexter served as Senior Vice President for SYNTEK Technologies, a small, high-technology firm, where he worked with DARPA on Project Genoa.  He also served on the Board of Directors for Saffron Technology, Inc. and Digital Commerce Corp.  In 1990, he co-founded TP Systems, Inc and then served as the firm’s chief designer and programmer until 1996.  From 1993 to 1996, Dr. Poindexter was a consultant with Elkins Group, where he was Chairman of the Maritime Advisory Committee and a member of the Board of Directors.  Prior to that, he served as Senior Scientist with Presearch, Inc.

Dr. Poindexter served as National Security Advisor and Deputy National Security Advisor for President Reagan from 1983 to 1986, and as Military Assistant in the White House prior to that.  He provided recommendations to the President on national security, foreign policy and defense policy issues.  He was also responsible for improving command and management systems to support the President in national security crisis management, culminating in the creation of a new high-technology crisis management center.

Dr. Poindexter served 29 years active duty in the U.S. Navy, rising to the rank of Vice Admiral.  While in the U.S. Navy, he specialized in training, new tactics and battle management procedures and pioneering uses of shipboard computers.  He holds doctoral and master’s degrees in physics from the California Institute of Technology (1961, 1964).  He received his bachelor’s degree in engineering from the U.S. Naval Academy (1958). 

Ms. Gayle Sheppard is Saffron’s Executive Chairman of the Board of Directors. She leads the Saffron executive team in the execution of Saffron’s business growth plans. Gayle has over 25 years of industry experience in enterprise software and services, international executive leadership experience with global companies and hands-on involvement with emerging companies, boards and academia. Prior to Saffron, she was VP/Managing Director at PeopleSoft, Inc., CEO/President MarketMile, LLC (now Ketera, Inc.), VP Worldwide Sales, J.D.Edwards & Company, President and General Manager, J.D. Edwards Japan, K.K. and Vice President Sales and Marketing, J.D.Edwards Asia Pacific Ltd.  She is a Research Fellow at UNC Kenan-Flagler’s Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise and serves on the Advisory Board of Sociocast, LLC, a Web 3.0 social influence network platform company, the Board of Directors for the North Carolina Life and Sciences Museum and the National Advisory Board for the Ackland Art Museum at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Gayle is a graduate of the University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, where she received a B.S., Business Administration.