Mark grew up in the small towns of rural Minnesota leading a Tom Sawyer like life filled with fishing, hunting, and baseball.  Machines have fascinated him from a young age. For the last 24 years he has been working on routing and switching equipment for local and storage area networks. His work has been concentrated at the board level interface between hardware and software in the diagnostic and driver areas. Currently he is writing drivers for embedded Linux Fibre Channel switching systems.  In addition to writing robust, easily maintainable code, he specializes in isolating very difficult to diagnose manufacturing and design problems.

 

Mark's interest regarding PRT began in 1980 while a student at the University.  Long, inefficient bus rides back and forth to school got him thinking there must be a better way.  Slowly he conceived of the idea of a better system, better than buses, better than trains, even better than the personal automobile.  A system so good and so inexpensive to use, people would prefer it to their own cars.  In 1998 Mark learned of the work of Dr J. Edward Anderson and realized that Dr. Anderson had been working on Mark's dream transportation system for many years before Mark ever even thought about it.  The IEEE provided an opportunity to meet and since 2006 the two have worked more closely.

 

Mark is married and the father of three, all in college.  He volunteers by running two youth teenage baseball teams, one 19 years old and younger, the other 16 years and younger. 

 

Mark has believed for a long time the world needs PRT, but current environmental conditions stress the need even further. Societies need to get people out of their cars. ITNS is the right solution at the right time.