Clemson scientist named Kavli Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences

Published: July 26, 2012

Kevin Finneran image by: Clemson University

CLEMSON — Clemson University environmental engineering and Earth sciences associate professor Kevin Finneran has been named a Kavli Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). 

The Kavli program recognizes young scientists who are leaders in their fields and brings them together in the Frontiers of Science program, which is a collaborative symposium between the academy and the leading scientific academy of a foreign country.

Finneran was invited to speak and become a Kavli Fellow at the German-American Frontiers of Science conference in Potsdam, Germany. The Alexander Von Humboldt Foundation is the participating organization in Germany. 

Kavli Fellows are encouraged to establish overseas research collaborations with counterparts from their respective Frontiers of Science symposia, and the hosting organizations provide funding to initiate these visiting professorships. 

Finneran’s presentation “Bioremediation: Basic Science Meeting Applied Goals” can be viewed at http://vimeo.com/44772026.

Finneran received a bachelor’s degree in environmental sciences (1996) from Rutgers University and a Ph.D. in microbiology (2001) at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. From 2002 to 2004 he was an environmental microbiologist with GeoSyntec Inc. in Boston. His work at GeoSyntec included both basic research and applied field bioremediation investigations.

In 2004, he became a member of the faculty of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He joined Clemson in the fall of 2010.

Finneran is a member of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) and the American Chemical Society (ACS). He serves on the editorial board of Soil and Sediment Contamination: An International Journal. He is a member of the scientific advisory board for the Association for Environmental Health Sciences’ (AEHS) bi-annual Contaminated Soils, Sediments and Water conference, and is co-editor-in-chief for the associated journal.

Finneran’s research focuses on anaerobic microbial ecology, emphasizing basic microbial physiology and its role in biodegradation and biofuel production and how it can be adapted for specific applications. 

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