Robert Jackson Marks II (born August 25, 1950) is an American

electrical engineer Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

, computer scientist and distinguished professor at

Baylor University Baylor University is a Private university, private Baptist research university in Waco, Texas, United States. It was chartered in 1845 by the last Congress of the Republic of Texas. Baylor is the oldest continuously operating university in Te ...

. His contributions include the Zhao-Atlas-Marks (ZAM) time-frequency distribution in the field of

signal processing Signal processing is an electrical engineering subfield that focuses on analyzing, modifying and synthesizing ''signals'', such as audio signal processing, sound, image processing, images, Scalar potential, potential fields, Seismic tomograph ...

,Leon Cohen, Time Frequency Analysis: Theory and Applications, Prentice Hall, (1994) the Cheung–Marks theoremJ.L. Brown and S.D.Cabrera, "On well-posedness of the Papoulis generalized sampling expansion," IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems, May 1991 Volume: 38, Issue 5, pp. 554–556 in Shannon sampling theory and the Papoulis-Marks-Cheung (PMC) approach in multidimensional sampling.Matthew A. Prelee and David L. Neuhoff. "Multidimensional Manhattan Sampling and Reconstruction." IEEE Transactions on Information Theory 62, no. 5 (2016): 2772-2787. He was instrumental in the defining of the field of

computational intelligence In computer science, computational intelligence (CI) refers to concepts, paradigms, algorithms and implementations of systems that are designed to show " intelligent" behavior in complex and changing environments. These systems are aimed at m ...

and co-edited the first book using ''computational intelligence'' in the title. A Christian and an

old earth creationist Old Earth Creationism (OEC) is an umbrella of theological views encompassing certain varieties of creationism which may or can include day-age creationism, gap creationism, progressive creationism, and sometimes theistic evolution. Broadly s ...

, he is a subject of the 2008 pro-

intelligent design Intelligent design (ID) is a pseudoscientific argument for the existence of God, presented by its proponents as "an evidence-based scientific theory about life's origins".#Numbers 2006, Numbers 2006, p. 373; " Dcaptured headlines for it ...

motion picture, '' Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed''.

Professional career

Marks has received his bachelor's and master's degrees from

Rose–Hulman Institute of Technology Rose–Hulman Institute of Technology (RHIT) is a private university in Terre Haute, Indiana, United States. It was founded in 1874 and houses twelve academic departments with over thirty undergraduate and graduate degree programs in science, en ...

in 1972 and 1973, respectively. During his doctoral studies at

Texas Tech University Texas Tech University (Texas Tech, Tech, or TTU) is a public university, public research university in Lubbock, Texas, United States. Established on February 10, 1923, and called Texas Technological College until 1969, it is the flagship instit ...

, he was supervised by J.F. Walkup; his dissertation focused on optical signal processing. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in 1977. Marks is a distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering at

and serves as the director of the Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence. From 1977 to 2003, he was on the faculty of the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW and informally U-Dub or U Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington, United States. Founded in 1861, the University of Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast of the Uni ...

in Seattle. He was the first president of the

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines. The IEEE has a corporate office ...

(IEEE) Neural Networks Council (now the

IEEE Computational Intelligence Society The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines. The IEEE has a corporate office ...

). He is a Fellow of the

IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) organization, 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines. The IEEE ...

and the

Optical Society of America Optica, founded as the Optical Society of America (later the Optical Society), is a professional society of individuals and companies with an interest in optics and photonics. It publishes journals, organizes conferences and exhibitions, and ca ...

Technical contributions

Marks is a researcher in the area of

electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

. * ''Treatment of prostate cancer.'' Marks and his colleagues developed algorithms for real time identification of placement of radioactive seeds in cancerous prostates. For this work, he was a co-recipient of the Judith Stitt Best Abstract Award from the American

Brachytherapy Brachytherapy is a form of radiation therapy where a sealed radiation, radiation source is placed inside or next to the area requiring treatment. The word "brachytherapy" comes from the Ancient Greek, Greek word , meaning "short-distance" or "s ...

Society. The algorithm is used clinically. * ''Optimal detection.'' In the field of

detection theory Detection theory or signal detection theory is a means to measure the ability to differentiate between information-bearing patterns (called stimulus in living organisms, signal in machines) and random patterns that distract from the information (c ...

, Marks and his colleagues developed the first closed form solution for the Neyman–Pearson optimal detection of signals in non-

Gaussian noise Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) is the eponym of all of the topics listed below. There are over 100 topics all named after this German mathematician and scientist, all in the fields of mathematics, physics, and astronomy. The English eponymo ...

* ''Power load forecasting using neural networks.'' With his colleagues at the

, Marks was the firstA. 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 In machine learning, a neural network (also artificial neural network or neural net, abbreviated ANN or NN) is a computational model inspired by the structure and functions of biological neural networks. A neural network consists of connected ...

to forecast power demands for utilities in 1991. Six years later neural networks were being used by 32 major North American utilities and remains in common use today.

sponsors a

MATLAB MATLAB (an abbreviation of "MATrix LABoratory") is a proprietary multi-paradigm programming language and numeric computing environment developed by MathWorks. MATLAB allows matrix manipulations, plotting of functions and data, implementat ...

based webinar on use of neural networks in load forecasting. A technique "similar to one already used to successfully forecast electrical load needs" has been used to forecast Dow Jones closing values using data from millions of

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

messages. * ''The Smith Tube.'' Marks was a member of the Baylor research team that introduced the Smith Tube, a visualization tool useful in advanced microwave systems design. A generalization of the Smith Chart, the Smith Tube is currently in

Keysight Keysight Technologies, Inc. is an American company that manufactures electronics test and measurement equipment and software. The name is a blend of ''key'' and ''insight''. The company was formed as a spin-off of Agilent Technologies, which inhe ...

's Advanced Design System (ADS) software package. * ''Convolutional neural networks.'' With Homma and Atlas, Marks developed a temporal

convolutional neural network A convolutional neural network (CNN) is a type of feedforward neural network that learns features via filter (or kernel) optimization. This type of deep learning network has been applied to process and make predictions from many different ty ...

used widely in

Deep learning Deep learning is a subset of machine learning that focuses on utilizing multilayered neural networks to perform tasks such as classification, regression, and representation learning. The field takes inspiration from biological neuroscience a ...

. * ''Signal display in time and frequency.'' The Zhao-Atlas-Marks time-frequency distribution, (a.k.a. the ZAM distribution or ZAMD), was originally called the cone shaped time-frequency distribution. ** The ZAMD is a special case of Cohen's class of time-frequency distributions. ** The ZAMD is currently in the

Time-Frequency Toolbox and

National Instruments The National Instruments Corporation, doing business as NI, is an America, American multinational corporation, multinational company with international operations. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, Austin, Texas, it is a producer of automated tes ...

' LabVIEW Tools for Time-Frequency, Time-Series, and Wavelet Analysis ** The ZAMD has been applied in numerous areas: * ''

Remote sensing Remote sensing is the acquisition of information about an physical object, object or phenomenon without making physical contact with the object, in contrast to in situ or on-site observation. The term is applied especially to acquiring inform ...

''. Marks and his colleagues were the first to use neural network inversion in remote sensing. They measured snow parameters from microwave measurements made by satellites. Their general approach is widely used today. * ''Wireless arrays.'' Marks is a co-recipient of a

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

Tech Brief for pioneering power efficient communication in wireless arrays. * ''Power generation.'' Working with

Southern California Edison Southern California Edison (SCE), the largest subsidiary of Edison International, is the primary electric utility company for much of Southern California. It provides 15 million people with electricity across a service territory of approximate ...

, Marks and his colleagues pioneered

based methods for early detection of intermittent shorted windings in multi ton

electric generators In electricity generation, a generator, also called an ''electric generator'', ''electrical generator'', and ''electromagnetic generator'' is an electromechanical device that converts mechanical energy to electrical energy for use in an externa ...

while the rotors were still turning. * Marks has made contributions to the

sampling theorem Sampling may refer to: *Sampling (signal processing), converting a continuous signal into a discrete signal *Sample (graphics), Sampling (graphics), converting continuous colors into discrete color components *Sampling (music), the reuse of a soun ...

including authoring the first book exclusively dedicated to the subject. ** ''Restoration of lost samples.'' Using "sophisticated estimation of the missing samples using previous and future samples", Marks first showed that, when a signal is sampled above its

Nyquist rate In signal processing, the Nyquist rate, named after Harry Nyquist, is a value equal to twice the highest frequency ( bandwidth) of a given function or signal. It has units of samples per unit time, conventionally expressed as samples per se ...

, lost samples "are redundant, in the sense that any finite number of them can be obtained from the remaining ones by solving a system of linear equations". ** ''Ill-posed sampling (The Cheung-Marks Theorem).'' The

's Cheung–Marks theorem shows that samples taken from a signal at or above the

may prove incapable of restoring the signal in the presence of small amounts of

noise Noise is sound, chiefly unwanted, unintentional, or harmful sound considered unpleasant, loud, or disruptive to mental or hearing faculties. From a physics standpoint, there is no distinction between noise and desired sound, as both are vibrat ...

. ** ''Optimal image sampling.'' An image is said to be optimally sampled when the samples per unit area are minimized subject to no degradation of the interpolated image. Marks's contributions to optimal image sampling include: ** ''The Papoulis-Marks-Cheung Approach.'' Marks and Cheung extended the generalized sampling expansion of Athanasios Papoulis to higher dimensions. ** ''Sub-Nyquist Sampling.'' Cheung and Marks showed that images could be sampled below their

and still be recovered without

aliasing In signal processing and related disciplines, aliasing is a phenomenon that a reconstructed signal from samples of the original signal contains low frequency components that are not present in the original one. This is caused when, in the ori ...

. * ''Optical computers.'' Marks invented and implemented an all optical computer that – using lenses, mirrors, and light from a laser – performs iterative calculations literally at the speed of light.

Evolutionary Informatics Lab website

In 2006 Marks hired

William Dembski William Albert Dembski (born July 18, 1960) is an American mathematician, philosopher and theologian. He was a proponent of intelligent design (ID) pseudoscience, specifically the concept of specified complexity, and was a senior fellow of the ...

as a part-time postdoctoral researcher; Dembski is an

proponent and former Baylor staff member at the heart of a previous intelligent design controversy at Baylor over the

Michael Polanyi Center The Michael Polanyi Center (MPC) at Baylor University, Texas, was the first center at a research university exclusively dedicated to the principle of intelligent design, primarily to host William Dembski, its director, and Bruce L. Gordon, its ...

's promotion of intelligent design, which had been resolved when Baylor disbanded that center in 2000. Dembski's position in Marks' lab was funded by a $30,000 gift from the Lifeworks Foundation; the gift went through the university's development department and not its academic grant administration. Dembski's role was stated in the gift documents. Marks said that he kept Dembksi's presence quiet. By December 2006 Dembski's university position had been brought to the university administration's attention, and the university returned the unspent funds and terminated Dembski's position. Marks created a website to describe the work that he and Dembski were doing, which the website described as happening at the "Evolutionary Informatics Lab" at Baylor. In the summer of 2007 that website was called to the attention of the Baylor administration after Marks discussed that work on a podcast hosted by

Casey Luskin The Center for Science and Culture (CSC), formerly known as the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture (CRSC), is part of the Discovery Institute (DI), a conservative Christian think tank in the United States. The CSC lobbies for the inc ...

of the

Discovery Institute The Discovery Institute (DI) is a conservatism in the United States, politically conservative think tank that advocates the pseudoscience, pseudoscientific concept Article available froUniversiteit Gent of intelligent design (ID). It was fou ...

, and the university administration shut the website down. Marks challenged the removal. The site was reposted to a server outside of Baylor. The dispute over the website was covered in the 2008 pro-intelligent design film '' Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed''.

Christianity

Marks served as the faculty adviser to the

's chapter of

Campus Crusade for Christ Cru (until 2011 known as Campus Crusade for Christ—informally "Campus Crusade" or simply "Crusade"—or CCC) is an interdenominational Christian parachurch organization. It was founded in 1951 at the University of California, Los Angeles by ...

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 Christian apologetics (, "verbal defense, speech in defense") is a branch of Christian theology that defends Christianity. Christian apologetics have taken many forms over the centuries, starting with Paul the Apostle in the early church and Pa ...

presentations. Venues include Poland, Japan, Moscow, Canada, and Siberia.

Other activities

*With William A. Dembski, Marks offered statistical arguments against

James Cameron James Francis Cameron (born August 16, 1954) is a Canadian filmmaker, who resides in New Zealand. He is a major figure in the post-New Hollywood era and often uses novel technologies with a Classical Hollywood cinema, classical filmmaking styl ...

's claim to have found the burial site of

Jesus Jesus (AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, and many Names and titles of Jesus in the New Testament, other names and titles, was a 1st-century Jewish preacher and religious leader. He is the Jesus in Chris ...

as portrayed in Cameron's documentary

The Lost Tomb of Jesus ''The Lost Tomb of Jesus'' is a pseudoarchaeological docudrama co-produced and first broadcast on the Discovery Channel and VisionTV in Canada on March 4, 2007, covering the discovery of the Talpiot Tomb. It was directed by Canadian documenta ...

. * Marks has served as a consultant with

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

DARPA The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Originally known as the Adva ...

, the

Pacific Gas and Electric Company The Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) is an American investor-owned utility (IOU). The company is headquartered at Kaiser Center, in Oakland, California. PG&E provides natural gas and electricity to 5.2 million households in the norther ...

The Boeing Company The Boeing Company, or simply Boeing (), is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, rotorcraft, rockets, satellites, and missiles worldwide. The company also provides leasing and product support s ...

, the John Fluke Manufacturing Company, and

. *Marks was the cartoonist for the student newspaper while at

., *Marks hosted a political radio talk show in the early 1970s. * Marks's

Erdős number The Erdős number () describes the "collaborative distance" between mathematician Paul Erdős and another person, as measured by authorship of mathematical papers. The same principle has been applied in other fields where a particular individual ...

is three and his

Bacon number Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon or Bacon's Law is a parlor game where players challenge each other to choose an actor whom they connect to another actor via a film in which both actors appeared: this is repeated to try to find the shortest path that ...

is two. Therefore, his

Erdős–Bacon number A person's Erdős–Bacon number is the sum of their Erdős number—which measures the "collaborative distance" in authoring academic papers between that person and Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős—and their Bacon number—which represents t ...

is five.
"Robert J. Marks II has an Erdős-Bacon number of five." Retrieved 2010-05-05.

Books by Robert J. Marks II

* R.J. Marks II, ''Non-Computable You: What You Do Artificial Intelligence Never Will,'' Discovery Press, (2022)

* R.J. Marks II and William A. Dembski with J. P. Moreland, ''For a Greater Purpose: The Life and Legacy of Walter Bradley,'' Erasmus Press, (2020)

* R.J. Marks II, ''The Case for Killer Robots: Why America's Military Needs to Continue Development of Lethal AI,'' Discovery Institute Press, (2020)

* R.J. Marks II, William A. Dembski and Winston Ewert, ''Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics,'' World Scientific, Singapore, (2017

* R.J. Marks II,

Michael Behe Michael Joseph Behe ( ; born January 18, 1952) is an American biochemist and an advocate of the pseudoscientific principle of intelligent design (ID). Behe serves as professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, an ...

, William A. Dembski, Bruce L. Gordon, John C. Sanford, Editors, ''Biological Information - New Perspectives,'' World Scientific, Singapore, (2013

* R.J. Marks II, ''Handbook of Fourier Analysis and Its Applications,'' Oxford University Press, (2009

* 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 B. Fogel David B. Fogel (born February 2, 1964) is a pioneer in evolutionary computation. Fogel received his Ph.D. in engineering from the University of California, San Diego in 1992. He is currently Chief Scientist at Trials.ai, and holds other foundi ...

and Toshio Fukuda; Editors, ''Computational Intelligence: A Dynamic System Perspective'', IEEE Press, (1995). * R.J. Marks II, Editor, ''Fuzzy Logic Technology and Applications'', IEEE Technical Activities Board, Piscataway, (1994). *

Jacek M. Zurada Jacek M. Zurada is a Polish-American computer scientist who serves as a Professor of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Louisville, Kentucky. His M.S. and Ph.D. degrees are from Politechnika Gdaṅska (Gdansk ...

, R.J. Marks II and C.J. Robinson; Editors, ''Computational Intelligence: Imitating Life'', (IEEE Press, 1994). * R.J. Marks II, Editor, ''Advanced Topics in Shannon Sampling and Interpolation Theory'', (Springer-Verlag, 1993). * R.J. Marks II, ''Introduction to Shannon Sampling and Interpolation Theory,'' Springer-Verlag, (1991

* M.A. El-Sharkawi and R. J. Marks II, Editors, ''Applications of Neural Networks to Power Systems'', IEEE Press, Piscataway, (1991).

References

External links

Robert J. Marks II, PhD
home page
Dr. Robert J. Marks II
Engineering Faculty, Baylor University {{DEFAULTSORT:Marks, Robert J. 1950 births American Christians Baylor University faculty Christian Old Earth creationists American Christian creationists Fellows of the IEEE Intelligent design advocates Living people University of Washington faculty American electrical engineers American information theorists American optical engineers 20th-century American engineers 21st-century American engineers Fellows of Optica (society) Rose–Hulman Institute of Technology alumni Texas Tech University alumni American artificial intelligence researchers Electrical engineering academics