Kevin Clark
Kevin B. Clark earned his Doctorate of Philosophy from the Program for Biopsychology of Learning and Memory at Southern Illinois University in 1999. He has held basic and/or clinical research appointments at Oregon State University, Southern Illinois University, and the Max-Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics. Among other professional activities, Dr. Clark has served as member of ten professional societies, referee and associate editor for professional journals, editor of collected volumes, and long-time consultant and collaborator to the Research and Development Service at the Veterans Affairs Greater Los Angeles Health Care System. Dr. Clark has spent much of his research career using his diverse training in disciplines of engineering, psychology, biochemistry, physiology, and neuroscience to study the evolution and biological basis of learning, memory, and intelligence. Dr. Clark’s award-winning research and patented inventions improving learning, memory, and recovery from traumatic brain injury through peripheral neuromodulation gained recognition from MacArthur fellow Dr. James McGaugh and other members of the National Academy of Sciences, USA. Later comparative primate studies conducted with systems neuroscientist Dr. Nikos Logothetis focused on Dr. Clark’s interests in the neural basis of learning, memory, perception, and cognition across animal phylogeny. His broader interests in the evolution of intelligent behavior largely began in graduate school while briefly working with molecular and cellular evolutionist Dr. Sidney Fox on protocell models of learning and memory and continue today with his most recent research studying quantum, relativistic, and Kaluza-Klein aspects of microbial conflict mediation and instigation, particularly heuristic-guided social reciprocity learned by ciliates during intra- and intermate selection. By creating paradigms comparing microbial learning and goal-directed behavior with animal decision making, Dr. Clark has shown microbes to behave as soft-matter quantum computers. The major implications of Dr. Clark’s ground-breaking findings regarding learned microbial social behavior have been acknowledged by noted experts worldwide. His work extends to many topics, including host-parasite and pathogen-pathogen interactions, cellular decision making, NMDA-receptor-dependent plasticity, nervous system repair, evolution of social behaviors and intelligences, adaptation to extreme environments, and emergence of evolutionary and developmental transitions. Dr. Clark is now preparing patent applications exploiting primitive microbial intelligences for next-generation medical, industrial, and national defense biotechnologies.