Kinser earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in physics from William Jewell College and University of Alabama, Huntsville respectively and DSc in optics and electro-optical sciences from Southeastern Institute of Technology. He joined George Mason in 1997 as a founding member of The Institute for Biosciences, Bioinformatics, and Biotechnology (IB3). IB3 has since morphed into the college’s School of Systems Biology. In 2010, he joined the School of Physics, Astronomy, and Computational Sciences which eventually branched into two departments, one being Computational and Data Sciences (CDS). In January of 2017, Kinser became the first full-time chair of CDS which had 25 undergraduate majors and two healthy PhD programs. The program has now grown to over 300 undergraduate majors, over 100 PhD students, and a growing MS program, becoming one of the largest departments in the College of Science by number of majors. Under his guidance, the undergraduate CDS degree is now offered on the Fairfax campus, the Mason Korea campus, and as an online program.