Return to WFK home pageBrief Biography of W. Frank Kinard
W. Frank Kinard is the Mebane Professor of Chemistry at the College of Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina. His teaching responsibilities include Nuclear Chemistry, Environmental Chemistry, Instrumental Analysis and Quantitative Analysis. He received his B.S. degree in Chemistry from Duke University and his Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry from the University of South Carolina. He was an Atomic Energy Commission Post-Doctoral Fellow at Florida State University and a Research Associate in chemical oceanography in the Department of Marine Sciences of the University of Puerto Rico in Mayagüez. His most recent research activities have centered on the application of inductively coupled plasma - mass spectrometry to the analysis of high-level wastes at the Savannah River Site. Currently, he is serving as the Director of the "Summer School in Nuclear Chemistry" sponsored by the U. S. Department of Energy and the American Chemical Society at San Jose State University. He is the Secretary of the Division of Nuclear Chemistry and Technology of the American Chemical Society. He has spent his summers for the last two decades as a Senior Research Scientist in the Chemical Technology Division of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Guest Scientist in the Nuclear Chemistry Division of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and as a Visiting Scientist at the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory and the Analytical Development Section of the Savannah River Technology Center. He has been a faculty member at the College of Charleston since 1972 and is the author of more than 35 technical publications.
Prof. Kinard is an analytical chemist who has worked for the past 20 years in solvent extraction, solution chemistry thermodynamics, and the analysis of high-level radioactive wastes. In the past decade, he has been extensively involved with the Analytical Development Section of the Savannah River Technology Center where he has participated in finding solutions to the many problems related to the analysis of high-level waste tanks and the start-up of the Defense Waste Processing Facility vitrification process. He has participated in review panels for the Characterization, Monitoring and Sensor Technology program for DOE and for the Basic Chemical Sciences panel for the EPA.
His main pedagogical interests are in developing experiments involving the use of chemical instrumentation in solving chemical and environmental analytical problems. These experiments emphasize the use of computer based data analyses to answer chemical questions. Recent work has included using the worldwide web as an augmentation to classroom activities.