Robert J. Marks II

Robert Jackson Marks II is a Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Baylor University and proponent of intelligent design. From 1977 to 2003, he was on the faculty of the University of Washington in Seattle. He was the first president of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Neural Networks Council (now the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society) and the editor-in-chief of the "IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks." Marks has over 300 peer-reviewed technical publications, and is a fellow of the IEEE and the Optical Society of America. [http://cayman.globat.com/~trademarksnet.com/Marks/CV/bio.htm Marks' 'expanded biography'] ] A creationist, [http://cayman.globat.com/~trademarksnet.com/Marks/ChristainFacultyNetwork/Presentations/GenesisAndScience.ppt Genesis and Science: Compatibility Extraordinaire (slide presentation)] ] he is a subject of the 2008 pro-intelligent design motion picture, .Jerry Pierce, "Baptist professors featured in new film," Southern Baptist Texan (January 28, 2008)] cite web |author=Lesley Burbridge-Bates|publisher= [http://www.premisemedia.com/ Premise Media] |date=2007-08-22 |url=http://www.premisemedia.com/EXPELLED-PressRelease_08-22-07.pdf |title="Expelled" Press Release |accessdate=2008-04-07 |format= |work=]

The Evolutionary Informatics Lab website controversy

In 2007, Marks created on a Baylor University server a website for a cyberspace entity known as the Evolutionary Informatics Lab, a short-lived and controversial site promoting intelligent design. [ [http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2007/09/follow-the-mone.html Follow the money: more Dembski/Baylor-related mischief?] Andrea Bottaro. Panda's Thumb, September 7, 2007.] The website hosted on Baylor servers was deleted when Baylor's administration determined that it violated university policy forbidding professors from creating the impression that their personal views represent Baylor as an institution. Baylor said they would permit Marks to repost his website on their server, provided a disclaimer accompany any intelligent design-advancing research to make clear that the work does not represent the university's position. [ [http://www.evolutionnews.org/2007/07/william_dembski_addresses_fort.html William Dembski Addresses Forthcoming Intelligent Design Research that Advances ID and Answers Critics] , Evolution News & Views, Discovery Institute] [ [http://www.worldmag.com/articles/13256?CFID=3176302&CFTOKEN=55208861 Crisis averted] , Mark Bergin, World Magazine] [ Baylor U. Removes a Web Page Associated With Intelligent Design From Its Site by Elizabeth F. Farrell. "Chronicle of Higher Education, Sept. 4, 2007. [http://chronicle.com/daily/2007/09/2007090406n.htm online] "subscription access"] The site now resides on a third-party server and still contains the material advancing intelligent design.

Additional controversy arose when it as discovered that William Dembski, a notable intelligent design proponent and former Baylor staff member at the heart of a previous intelligent design controversy at Baylor over the Michael Polanyi Center's promotion of intelligent design who was removed as the center's director, had returned to Baylor as a member of the Evolutionary Informatics Lab. [Grace Maalouf, Brad Briggs "BU had role in Dembski return," Baylor Lariat, Nov. 16, 2007 [http://www.baylor.edu/content/services/document.php/55939.pdf] ] Dembski's participation was funded by a $30,000 grant from the Lifeworks Foundation, which is controlled by researcher Brendan Dixon of the Biologic Institute, another lab promoting intelligent design affiliated with the Discovery Institute). [ [http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2007/09/follow_the_mone.html Follow the money: more Dembski/Baylor-related mischief?] , Andrea Bottaro, Panda's Thumb] [ [http://dynamodata.fdncenter.org//990pf_pdf_archive/911/911942043/911942043_200612_990PF.pdf Lifeworks Foundation 990 form for the year 2006] ]

Marks has expressed agreement that "associating with [intelligent design] proponents can be harmful to your career" and sympathy for Guillermo Gonzalez and William Dembski, who feature with Marks in the controversial pro-intelligent design film "". [http://intelligentdesign.podomatic.com/entry/2007-07-20T10_40_02-07_00 Well-Informed: Dr. Robert Marks and the Evolutionary Informatics Lab] , Casey Luskin interviewer, "Intelligent Design the Future" podcast series of The Center for Science and Culture of the Discovery Institute.] Interview footage with Marks was shot for "Expelled" following the deletion of the website. The motion picture alleges persecution of intelligent design advocates by academic institutions and the scientific establishment.

Mathematician Mark Perakh states that in a reply by Dembski and Marks, [William A. Dembski and R.J. Marks II, "Active Information in Evolutionary Search", listed at:
* [http://www.math.chalmers.se/~olleh/papers.html Olle Häggström: Some recent papers]
* [http://www.intelligentdesign.org/science_2.php Science and Philosophy Articles About Intelligent Design] , Center for Science and Culture] to "an article critical of Dembski's concepts" by Swedish mathematician Olle Häggström: [http://www.talkreason.org/articles/olle.cfm Olle, Tom, and "Active Information"] , Mark Perakh, TalkReason]

Perakh states that while he "agree [s] that the concept of AI as such may be construed as reasonable",quotation|...the question is not whether AI as a concept has contents, but rather whether or not evolutionary algorithms can only succeed if the AI is ether front-loaded or supplied from outside sources. This question is related not only to Dembski's "displacement problem" but also to the significance of the NFL theorems for biological evolution.

To start with, Dembski and Marks offer no evidence that AI necessarily must be added to what they call "endogeneous information." They simply claim that this is so. (In the same categorical but unsubstantiated way Dembski pushed his "displacement problem," the term now replaced with "active information." There is a difference though. The very existence of AI is a reasonable idea; however its necessity for biological evolution, as it was asserted by the "displacement problem," was an unsupported surmise).

Technical contributions

With his colleagues at the University of Washington, he was the first A. Khotanzad, R. Afkhami-Rohani, Lu Tsun-Liang, A. Abaye, M. Davis, D.J. Maratukulam, "ANNSTLF-a neural-network-based electric load forecasting system," IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks, Volume 8, Issue 4, Jul 1997 pp. 835-846.] to apply an artificial neural network to forecast power demands for utilities, in 1991. [D.C. Park, M.A. El-Sharkawi, R.J. Marks II, L.E. Atlas & M.J. Damborg, "Electric load forecasting using an artificial neural network", IEEE Transactions on Power Engineering, vol.6, pp.442-449 (1991).] Six years later neural networks were being used by 32 major North American utilities.

Marks and his colleagues developed algorithms for real time identification of placement of radioactive seeds in cancerous prostates. [S. Narayanan, P.S. Cho and R.J. Marks II, "Fast Cross-Projection Algorithm for Reconstruction of Seeds in Prostate Brachytherapy", Med. Phys. 29 (7), July 2002, pp.1572-1579.] [S. Narayanan, P.S. Cho and R.J. Marks II, "Three-dimensional seed reconstruction from an incomplete data set for prostate brachytherapy", Phys. Med. Biol., vol.49, pp.3483-3494 (2004).] For this work, he was a co-recipient of the Judith Stitt Best Abstract Award from the American Brachytherapy Society. [http://cayman.globat.com/~trademarksnet.com/RobertMarks/CV/cv.htm Marks' curriculum vitae] ]

Marks is also a co-recipient of a NASA Tech Brief for development of power efficient communication in wireless arrays. [ [http://www.baylor.edu/pr/news.php?action=story&story=5781 NASA Recognizes Baylor Engineer For Innovative Technology ] ] [A.K. Das, R.J. Marks II, M.A. El-Sharkawi, Payman Arabshahi and Andrew Gray, "Minimum Power Broadcast Trees for Wireless Networks: Optimization Using the Viability Lemma", Proceedings of the NASA Earth Science Technology Conference, June 11-13, 2002, Pasadena, CA]

In the field of detection theory, Marks and his colleagues developed a closed form solution describing the performance of the Neyman-Pearson optimal detector in non-Gaussian noise. [S. A. Kassam Signal Detection in Non-Gaussian Noise. Springer Verlag, 1988.] [ [http://cayman.globat.com/~trademarksnet.com/RobertMarks/CV/cv.htm Detection in Laplace noise] R.J. Marks II, G.L. Wise, D.G. Haldeman and J.L. Whited, IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems, vol. AES-14, pp.866-872 (1978).] Citation broken|date=May 2008

Religious activities

Marks served as the faculty adviser to the University of Washington's chapter of Campus Crusade for Christ for seventeen years. He has presented his talk "What Does Calculus Have to Do with Christianity?" in Poland, Japan, Canada, Russia, and the United States.

Marks has made science-oriented Christian apologetics presentations internationally. [ [http://web.archive.org/web/20060907040357/http://web.ecs.baylor.edu/faculty/marks/Marks/ChristainFacultyNetwork/index_apologetics.htm Marks' apologetics page] ] Venues include Poland, Japan, Moscow, Canada, and Siberia. [http://web.ecs.baylor.edu/faculty/marks/Marks/CV/cv.htm Marks' CV] ] His creationist view is highlights in his "Genesis and Science: Compatibility Extraordinaire." There he says the God of Genesis as the creator of the universe, and indicate that the "sequence of events in Genesis is consistent with the sequence of events in science."

Books by Robert J. Marks II

* R. D. Reed and R.J. Marks II, "Neural Smithing: Supervised Learning in Feedforward Artificial Neural Networks," MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, (1999).
* M. Palaniswami, Y. Attikiouzel, R.J. Marks II, David Fogel and Toshio Fukuda; Editors, C"omputational Intelligence: A Dynamic System Perspective", IEEE Press, (1995).
* R.J. Marks II, Editor, "Fuzzy Logic Technology and Applications", IEEE Technical Activities Board, Piscataway, (1994).
* J.Zurada, R.J. Marks II and C.J. Robinson; Editors, Computational Intelligence: Imitating Life, (IEEE Press, 1994).
* R.J. Marks II, "Introduction to Shannon Sampling and Interpolation Theory," Springer-Verlag, (1991). [http://web.ecs.baylor.edu/faculty/marks/REPRINTS/1999_IntroductionToShannonSamplingAndInterpolationTheory.pdf] Citation broken|date=May 2008
* M.A. El-Sharkawi and R. J. Marks II, Editors, "Applications of Neural Networks to Power Systems", IEEE Press, Piscataway, (1991).

See also

*Baylor University
*William A. Dembski

References

External links

* [http://cayman.globat.com/~trademarksnet.com/RobertMarks/index.html Robert J. Marks II, PhD] home page
* [http://www.baylor.edu/ecs/engineering/faculty/index.php?id=29935 Dr. Robert J. Marks II] Engineering Faculty, Baylor University