Kevin grew up in Northern California, in Ukiah and in Davis. He attended the University of California, Davis, where he received a BS in physics. He then studied astronomy/astrophysics in graduate school, earning a Master's degree in astronomy from the University of Washington and his Doctorate from the University of Colorado. While at Colorado he worked for a time in JILA with Andrew Hamilton on the supernova remnant S Andromodae, the relic from the historical supernova 1885A. Kevin did his thesis work in CASA with John Stocke, where he looked at the relationship between intergalactic Lyman-alpha absorption systems and galaxies in the local universe.
After graduating, Dr. McLin pursued his long interest in education. He taught introductory courses in physics and astronomy at The Metropolitan State College of Denver and at Front Range Community College in Boulder, Colorado (the campus has since moved to Longmont). He also helped to create web tutorials for the introductory astronomy text The Cosmic Perspective, by Bennett, Donahue, Schneider and Voight. He continues to work on web-based educational tools at the University of California, Davis Department of Agricultural and Food Engineering, where he is creating a set of tools for Professor Paul Singh to be used in introductory courses on food engineering.
In his spare time Kevin enjoys the outdoors, especially cycling and mountaineering. He also enjoys cooking, reading, music, futzing around on his computer and hanging out at the local biergarten (weather permitting) or cyber cafe (space permitting).
