Sean Kinahan, Ph.D.

Dr. Sean Kinahan is a Senior Threat Scientist for Chemical and Biological Defense Programs at the National Strategic Research Institute, the University Affiliated Research Center of U.S. Strategic Command and the University of Nebraska.

Dr. Kinahan has devoted his career to studying biological aerosols and their properties. He has studied viable bioaerosol sampling, organism fate as an aerosol in laboratory and outdoor environments and compared using spider-webs to capture and age particulate with conventional particle aging techniques. He also works on sampling strategies, including biological and chemical detection in real-time and in optimization of collection and processing of air and surface samples.

More recently, Dr. Kinahan's work during the COVID pandemic was related to testing DOD and civilian aircraft for particle fate and exposure risks using a variety of real-time and offline analysis techniques. That work has continued within clinical environments, including U.S. Navy hospital ships.

As a researcher Dr. Kinahan has led a team investigating how biological signatures evolve or degrade over time both in the environment and upon collection and how that signature degradation varies from the degradation of the effective or infectious material.

Prior to NSRI, Dr. Kinahan was a staff member at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories where he had a lead role in novel methodology development and been a lead for independent verification and validation programs of new technologies for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Joint Program Executive Office.

Dr. Kinahan received his bachelor's and master's degrees in biomedical engineering from the University of Virginia and Johns Hopkins University. He earned his doctorate degree in biological defense and health security from the University of Nebraska Medical Center.