Professor Kim Renee Dunbar was born in Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania, to Frank and Bernice Dunbar and grew up with her three sisters Bonnie, Laura, and Colleen. She attended Sewickley High School before receiving a B.S. degree in Chemistry with a minor in Mathematics. Kim went on to receive a Ph.D. in Inorganic Chemistry at Purdue University. She went on to do a postdoctoral stint at Texas A&M University with the late, renowned chemist F.A. Cotton before accepting a position as an Assistant Professor at Michigan State University in East Lansing, MI, where she quickly rose through the ranks to Distinguished Professor. Kim Renee is currently a University Professor and the Davidson Professor of Science in the Chemistry Department at Texas A&M University. Dr. Dunbar has been recognized with numerous awards for teaching and research over the years. Professor Dunbar has been featured along with other prominent women scientists, including Marie Curie, in an Editorial in Angewandte Chemie on Women in Chemistry. At Texas A&M University, she is the first woman in the College of Science to be named a Chaired Professor. She is the author of over 360 publications and served as an Associate Editor for the leading journal in her field, Inorganic Chemistry, for 12 years. Her experimental and theoretical work to understand physical and chemical phenomena has redirected and focused other researchers’ work in her field.
