About

Natural Bridge Research builds software for algorithmic trading. Our strategies rest on probabilistic and statistical models with explicit assumptions, and each one is delivered with its assumptions, parameters, and test results documented. Builds and deployments are fully reproducible, so what was tested is exactly what runs, and critical components can be checked with formal methods.

Founder

Dr. John Hester holds a PhD in mathematics from the University of Florida, where he developed Etableau, an AI system for automated reasoning in first-order logic. As a Senior Research and Development Engineer at Imandra, he led program discovery and testing work on DARPA contracts, worked on software used to formally verify trading software, and led a team building an AI assistant for systems engineering models. He designed and built Longleaf, the firm's trading platform.

Selected publications

• Towards the Formal Verification of SysML v2 Models, MODELS Companion 2024.
• Etableau: Combining Tableaux and Superposition, 2021.
• Automated ZFC Theorem Proving with E, ARCADE 2019.