After seventeen years of public service, in 1989, he obtained an interdisciplinary MSc degree at the University of Colorado, Boulder, combining environmental science and ecology.
After his graduation from the University of California Los Angeles in 1972, Kineman started his career at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), working as officer and scientist in various assignments in oceanographic research at sea collecting geophysical, oceanographic, and climate data, Solar Forecaster at the Space Environment Services Center in Boulder, CO, and member of the NOAA-Coast Guard Spilled Oil Research Team (SOR Team) a research unit of the Outer Continental Shelf Environmental Assessment Program (OCSEAP),[2] publishing a one year study of the 'Tsesis' oil spill in the Baltic as his Masters Dissertation.
[3] He joined the Kenya Wildlife Conservation and Management Department of the Ministry of Environment and Tourism (later reorganized under Richard Leakey as the Kenya Wildlife Service) in 1987 as a Senior Research Warden through the US Peace Corps, and later helped conduct the 1981 census of Mountain Gorillas in 1981[4] under the direction of Dr. Sandy Harcourt at Dian Fossey's Karisoke Research Center in Rwanda.
He then began postgraduate research in ecology and returned to public service in NOAA at the National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC), developing distribution modeling techniques and ecological characterization datasets[5][6] for emerging USA and International global change programs,[7][8] and led development of the Data and Information Management component of a new NOAA "Center for Ecosystems Health" in Charleston, SC.
Extending the work of Dr. Robert Rosen (mathematical biologist),[10] he completed his Ph.D. in the Department of Environmental Studies in 2007, focused on ecological informatics, niche modeling, and complex systems theory,[11] which he continued in post-doc research through a Fulbright grant to India 2007-2008, working as Honorary Adjunct Fellow at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment (ATREE).