Cornerstone University
President’s AI Advisory Board

Dr. Angus Menuge
Philosophy, Mind, Agency, and the Limits of AI

Dr. Angus J. L. Menuge is Professor and Chair of Philosophy at Concordia University Wisconsin, where he has served since 1991. Educated at the University of Warwick and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and holding a Diploma in Christian Apologetics from the International Academy of Apologetics, Evangelism, and Human Rights in Strasbourg, Dr. Menuge brings unusual depth to questions at the intersection of philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, ethics, law, apologetics, and human dignity.

He is the author of Agents Under Fire: Materialism and the Rationality of Science, a major philosophical critique of reductive materialism and an important defense of rational agency, intentionality, and the irreducibility of human thought. Long before the present explosion of generative AI, Dr. Menuge was already addressing questions that now stand near the center of the AI conversation: What is agency? What is understanding? Can rational judgment, consciousness, and moral responsibility be reduced to mechanism? His recent work Powers of the Soul Beyond AI applies this long-standing philosophical program directly to contemporary artificial intelligence, arguing for the distinctive capacities of the human person in a technological age.

On an AI advisory board, Dr. Menuge brings philosophical seriousness about what AI can and cannot do. He is especially well positioned to address the nature of personhood, rationality, moral responsibility, human dignity, and the ethical limits of computational models of the mind.

David Copps
AI Entrepreneurship, Enterprise Deployment, and Real-World Systems

David Copps is CEO and co-founder of Worlds, an artificial intelligence company focused on bringing real-time digital intelligence to the physical world. A serial technology entrepreneur, Copps has repeatedly built companies at the intersection of machine learning, semantic search, large-scale data analysis, and enterprise software, moving AI from concept to deployment in demanding organizational settings.

Before founding Worlds, Copps founded Engenium and later PureDiscovery, the company behind Brainspace. These ventures helped pioneer machine-learning and semantic-search technologies used by hundreds of companies, including major enterprise, legal, government, and intelligence users. Brainspace became known for technology capable of learning from immense document collections and helping organizations extract meaning from otherwise unmanageable bodies of information. After years of developing AI and machine-learning systems for enterprise-scale use, Copps has turned his attention through Worlds to industrial intelligence, operational awareness, spatial computing, digital twins, and the fusion of real-world environments with AI-driven systems.

On an AI advisory board, Copps brings the perspective of a builder and doer: someone who understands not only the promise of AI, but also the practical challenges of making AI work at scale in organizations, industries, and physical environments where reliability, usability, and measurable value matter.

Dr. Don Barger
Innovation, AI, Global Missions, and Ministry Strategy

Dr. Don Barger serves as Director of Innovation and Artificial Intelligence for the International Mission Board, where he works at the intersection of emerging technology, global mission strategy, communication, training, and ministry practice. His work combines technical curiosity with more than two decades of experience on the mission field, giving him a rare ability to evaluate AI not merely as a technological novelty, but as a practical tool for serving people across cultures, languages, and ministry contexts.

Dr. Barger has become a leading Christian voice on the responsible use of AI in mission and ministry. He has helped develop AI resources for churches and faith-based organizations and has been closely associated with FaithBot.io, an AI ministry tool designed to answer questions about Christianity and support pastors, seekers, Bible studies, new believers, and mission outreach. His work emphasizes both opportunity and stewardship: AI should serve human relationships, honor the image of God, strengthen communication, and advance mission rather than replace the people and communities at the heart of Christian ministry.

On an AI advisory board, Dr. Barger brings practical experience in deploying AI for global communication, discipleship, outreach, training, and organizational innovation. He is especially well positioned to help a university think responsibly about AI in service-oriented, ministry-oriented, and cross-cultural contexts.

Dr. William A. Dembski
Mathematics, Philosophy, Theology, Information, and Public Thought

Dr. William A. Dembski is a mathematician, philosopher, theologian, and public intellectual whose work has addressed questions of probability, information, design, intelligence, and the relation of science to larger metaphysical and theological questions. He holds a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Chicago, a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and an M.Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary. He has also held postdoctoral appointments and research positions in mathematics, physics, computer science, philosophy, and religion, giving him an unusually broad scholarly formation for questions surrounding intelligence and computation.

Dr. Dembski has authored or edited more than thirty books and has published across mathematics, engineering, biology, philosophy, and theology. He is best known for developing the concept of specified complexity and for his work on design inference, probability, information, search, and the limits of undirected processes. His major works include The Design Inference, No Free Lunch, Being as Communion, and, with Robert J. Marks and Winston Ewert, Evolutionary Informatics. The 2023 expanded edition of The Design Inference brought his earlier work into renewed conversation with contemporary issues in information, causality, and artificial intelligence.

On an AI advisory board, Dr. Dembski brings a distinctive combination of mathematical rigor, philosophical analysis, theological literacy, and decades of work on information and intelligence. He is especially suited to address the conceptual foundations of AI, including design detection, search, optimization, probability, agency, and the difference between generated output and genuine understanding.

Dr. Onsi Fakhouri
Software Architecture, Cloud Systems, Scientific Computing, and Technology Leadership

Dr. Onsi Fakhouri is a software architect, technology executive, and scientific researcher whose career combines elite mathematical and scientific training with leadership in large-scale cloud-native software systems. He earned bachelor's degrees in physics and mathematics from MIT and a Ph.D. in astrophysics from the University of California, Berkeley. His doctoral work analyzed more than 100 million objects in major cosmological simulations to study the assembly of galaxies and dark matter halos, resulting in seven journal articles and recognition by Berkeley's Department of Astronomy with the Mary Elizabeth Uhl Prize.

After his scientific career, Dr. Fakhouri moved into high-impact software leadership. At Pivotal, he served as Senior Vice President of Cloud R&D, responsible for the development of Pivotal's cloud-native offerings, and held senior roles connected to Cloud Foundry and modern distributed software platforms. His work placed him at the center of enterprise cloud architecture, platform engineering, scalable systems, and the organizational disciplines required to build reliable software for mission-critical environments.

On an AI advisory board, Dr. Fakhouri brings rare depth in the infrastructure on which serious AI depends: large-scale computation, distributed systems, cloud platforms, data-intensive science, software reliability, and high-performing engineering organizations. His background allows him to bridge advanced scientific reasoning, enterprise software architecture, and practical technology strategy.

Dr. Robert J. Marks
Theory and Practice of AI, Neural Networks, and Engineering Leadership

Dr. Robert J. Marks is Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Baylor University and one of the most technically accomplished scientists in the world to address artificial and computational intelligence. His research career spans neural networks, signal processing, optimization, information theory, pattern recognition, fuzzy systems, evolutionary computation, and engineering applications of intelligent systems. He has produced hundreds of technical publications and has contributed to AI and neural-network research since long before the current generative-AI boom.

Dr. Marks is a Fellow of the IEEE, Optica, and the International Academy of Artificial Intelligence Sciences. He served as editor-in-chief of IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and was the first president of the IEEE Neural Networks Council, the professional body that later became the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society. He has authored and edited significant technical and public-facing books, including Neural Smithing, Handbook of Fourier Analysis and Its Applications, Non-Computable You, and The Case for Killer Robots.

On an AI advisory board, Dr. Marks brings deep technical authority in artificial intelligence, neural networks, engineering, and the mathematical limits of computation. He is especially valuable for helping a university distinguish between AI hype and AI reality, evaluate technical claims, and consider the ethical and human implications of increasingly capable machine systems.

Jonathan Swindell
Student & Computer Engineer

Jonathan Swindell is a Ph.D. candidate at Baylor University. Smart, highly motivated, and remarkably proactive, he has substantial hands-on experience with applied AI software, a fresh and innovative mindset, and no shortage of strong ideas. He is a deeply grounded in his Christian faith, preaching occasionally at his small church.