URI Hosting FBI Chief Explosive Scientist For Talk On Boston Marathon Bombing

KINGSTON, RI — Kirk Yeager, a chief explosive scientist with the FBI, will visit the University of Rhode Island for a presentation about the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing and other events involving explosives.

The lecture is scheduled for March 8 as part of the university's Forensic Science Seminar Series. URI students attend the series for credit, but lectures are free and open to the public.

During his presentation, "Bombings: From Tactics to Trials," 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), at 140 Flagg Road on the Kingston Campus from 3:30 to 5 p.m.

Yeager has worked for the FBI since 2000. Prior to that, he 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 and forensic examiner for the FBI Laboratory’s Explosives Unit, where he deployed as a bombing crime scene investigator to dozens of countries. Currently, he is the FBI’s chief explosives scientist.

Yeager has about 30 years 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.

Yeager has also taught at several universities, consulted as a technical advisor for Mythbusters, been profiled in Popular Mechanics, and became a published nonfiction author. In addition to analyzing the Boston Marathon bombing, Yeager has analyzed a number of other high-profile cases, including the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Oklahoma City bombing, 2016 Brussels bombing and Bali nightclub bombings.

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