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Thursday, October 10, 2024

ATTENTION: CSI fans, Friday October 18

FBI’s chief explosives scientist to share insight into explosives investigations at URI

Kristen Curry 

Kirk Yeager, chief explosives scientist at the Federal Bureau of Investigation who analyzed the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, will discuss explosives investigations during the University of Rhode Island’s Forensic Science Seminar Series on Friday, Oct. 18. URI students may attend the series for credit, but lectures are free and open to the public.

During his presentation, “Explosive Investigations,” Yeager will discuss a career that has taken him to crime scenes on Boylston Street and beyond. His lecture is scheduled for URI’s Beaupre Center for Chemical and Forensic Sciences (Room 100), 140 Flagg Road, on the Kingston Campus, from 3:30 to 5 p.m.

Before arriving at the FBI in 2000, Yeager worked as a research scientist and associate director of research and development at the Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center in New Mexico. For 10 years, he served as a physical scientist/forensic examiner for the FBI Laboratory’s Explosives Unit where he deployed as a bomb crime scene investigator to dozens of countries. 

Yeager has three decades of experience with explosives and IEDs, has presented more than 250 talks at international meetings and conferences, and has produced more than 80 specialty publications on the topic.

Over the course of his career, Yeager has taught at multiple universities, consulted for the TV show Mythbusters, been profiled in Popular Mechanics, and even has his own personal IMDb page. In addition to analyzing the Marathon bombing, 

Yeager has analyzed a number of other high-profile cases, including the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, 2016 Brussels bombing, and 2002 Bali nightclub bombings.

Yeager is a regular speaker in URI’s forensic lecture series. This fall’s series includes speakers from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and the State Fire Marshal Office on topics ranging from crime scene processing to a torched restaurant’s fire investigation.

Yeager’s lecture will be followed Oct. 25 by Daniel Greenfield speaking on forensic psychiatry. 

URI faculty members Bridget Buxton, an underwater archaeologist, and Otto Gregory, a chemical engineering professor who has consulted for the Department of Homeland Security, will also present on forensic archaeology (Nov. 8) and forensic corrosion cases (Nov. 22) this semester.

The long-running lecture series takes place in the University’s Beaupre Center on Friday afternoons. The series is coordinated by Professor of Chemistry Jimmie Oxley, an expert on explosives and energetic materials, and Dennis Hilliard, director of the Rhode Island State Crime Laboratory at URI. Those who can’t attend the seminars in-person can access them live online, or at a later date.

(Schedule subject to change; join email list for updates.)

To learn more about the URI Forensic Seminar Series or be added to the series’ email list, email dhilliard@uri.edu.