Steven Roth, founder and former chief executive officer of Maya Viz Ltd., the South Side software design firm that was bought by a unit of General Dynamics in April, died in his sleep early Sunday morning. He was 53.

Steven Roth

Mr. Roth launched the company -- now known as Viz, a division of General Dynamics' Scottsdale, Ariz.-based C4 Systems business unit -- in 1998, and built it into a success that attracted the attention of the giant defense contractor last year.

A General Dynamics spokeswoman said Mr. Roth's staff of about 55 would continue as planned, developing and deploying their "Command Post of the Future" communications software used by Army troops in Iraq to help them share information from remote locations.

The tone at Maya Viz, typically upbeat and buzzing with activity, was uncharacteristically silent yesterday morning. Staffers learned of Mr. Roth's death by phone late Sunday night.

Mr. Roth's staff gathered at an "all company meeting" in their conference room where Chief Operating Officer Beth Friel, sister firm Maya Design President Peter Lucas and Viz co-founder and lead designer Jake Kolojejchick comforted Mr. Roth's "numb" staff, telling those who were unable to work that they were free to go home.

Most staffers remained, Friel said, committed to continuing the work that Mr. Roth so enthusiastically relished and "just wanting to stay around everybody else."

"People are doing the best they can," said Friel, who was recruited by Roth in 2000. "It feels empty and so quiet. Steve could alternate between driving us crazy and making us drop our jaws in amazement with some of the things he thought of."

A General Dynamics spokeswoman said no immediate changes were expected and that in Mr. Roth's absence, Viz's current management would take the helm and continue to "carry the business forward."

The spokeswoman, Fran Jacques, declined to be specific about who might take Mr. Roth's position as Viz's "business unit manager." Top staffers include Kolojejchick and Friel.

"We're still 100 percent committed to Maya Viz. We're very, very saddened by this news," she said.

Described as "dreamer," a "visionary" and most often, "incredibly passionate" by his colleagues, Mr. Roth was probably best known for his oft-spoken desire to "change the world" by developing software that allowed complex data and numerical information to be represented graphically, and in a way that humans could better see, use and manipulate it.

"He believed it was not about the computers, but about the people," said Lucas, whose sister firm shares bright, colorful office space with Viz.

Maya Viz was borne out of work that Mr. Roth and co-founder Kolojejchick were doing as researchers at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute in the 1990s on finding the best ways to graphically arrange and present data.

By 1998, the project known as "Sage" was later commissioned by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to help the military better manage their logistical operations on the battlefield.

Mr. Roth and Kolajejchick convinced that their specialized software could drastically change the way humans interact with computers, subsequently launched Maya Viz.

Always animated, Roth was said to believe that the software's initial military focus was just a means to an end.

"Steve's vision was that the military work ... would level off and fade away and Viz customers would primarily be private sector," said Lucas.

But then "September 11th and the Iraq war happened," Kolojejchick added, and DARPA and the military became even more interested in the software program they'd commissioned from Viz. Known as "Command Post of the Future," it allowed soldiers to glimpse at each other's computer screens to share thoughts, data, strategies and other information, all while in remote locations.

Mr. Roth described the harried months beginning in late 2003 through 2004 that Viz spent tweaking the software for the Army's 1st Cavalry Division , and then deploying and training the soldiers in Iraq as "the most exciting thing I've ever done. For me, it's like being able to go the moon."

Additional orders for the software were commissioned earlier this year . This time, however, Mr. Roth was free from worrying about producing functional software in a few months time or finding willing staffers to spend months in Iraq training soldiers.

As a General Dynamics employee, he could rely upon the parent company's resources to help ready the software and was said to be steadily inching back towards what he loved the most -- research.

"He was a brilliant and enthusiastic leader and a reluctant manager," said Kolojejchick. "He loved the work," added Lucas.

Mr. Roth, he noted, was one of the pioneers in the field of "information visualization," which combined cognitive psychology, the graphic arts and computer science.

Mr. Roth, an avid user of instant messenger, sent a note to Lucas on Friday evening, looking forward to the "great time" they were both going to have as they got back to getting their "hands dirty" with research. "I don't think I'm going to [instant message] again, without thinking of Steve," said Lucas.

A native of New York City, Mr. Roth graduated from the State University of New York at Stony Brook with a bachelor's of science in psychology in 1974.

He did his graduate work in cognitive psychology at the University of Pittsburgh, earning a Ph.D. in 1981. He stayed on at Pitt doing research into using computers in the learning process until 1985, when he accepted another research position at CMU's Robotics Institute.

Mr. Roth, who colleagues said loved to bike and had just begun to work out again.

He is survived by his wife, Alice Buchdahl, and two sons, Michael and Danny.

A service will be held at 11 a.m. today at the Ralph Schugar Funeral Chapel at 5509 Centre Ave., Shadyside.