KWI Officers

Bob Cronk is a member of the Board of Directors for KWI, and is Chair of the Development Committee of the Board of Directors. He holds graduate (Information Science) and undergraduate (Physics) degrees from Georgia Tech, and conducted additional graduate work at the University of South Florida. He is a Fellow of the National Speleological Society, a member of the Cave Diving Section of the NSS, and a Partner with the Williams Canyon Project. He was Co-Director of the Romania Speleological Expeditions Project and a recipient of the NSS International Partnership Grant. Bob's career has ranged from academic to research in telecommunications. He has been chairman of a high-school math department and a faculty instructor at DeVry University. Bob's main area of interest was Artificial Intelligence (AI), and he has served as a research staff member of the AI Lab of the Computer Science Department at Carnegie-Mellon University. He continued his AI work as a Senior Research Computer Scientist for the Federal Judicial Center (United States Supreme Court) and as a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff for Bell Laboratories. He was a Director for MCI International, working for five years in Haiti helping build that nation's first wireless phone provider. Bob is currently a Senior Engineering Consultant for Verizon. He has numerous publications in karst-related activities and in the AI field, including Guest Editor of IEEE Network Magazine's Special Issue on Artificial Intelligence and Session Chair on Standards for the Western Communications Forum.

Harvey DuChene is a member of the Board of Directors for KWI. He holds Bachelors and Masters Degrees in geology from the University of New Mexico, and has published numerous papers on a variety of topics, including Pennsylvanian and Permian stratigraphy, tectonics in salt basins, impact of tectonics on speleogenesis in the southern Rocky Mountain region, cave mineralogy, and sulfuric acid speleogenesis. He has been interested in caves and karst for almost 50 years, in particular the study of hypogenic (sulfuric acid) cave systems. His primary focus has been the study of caves in the Guadalupe Mountains of New Mexico and west Texas. From 1991-1998, he was principal investigator for the Lechuguilla Cave Mineralogy and Geology Inventory Project on behalf of the National Park Service. This work resulted in the publication of the “Caves of the Guadalupe Mountains Symposium” in the Journal of Cave and Karst Studies in 2000. Harvey is a member of the Geological Society of America and American Association of Petroleum Geologists, and is a Fellow of the National Speleological Society (NSS). He was the NSS representative to the American Geological Institute from 1993-2007 and was responsible for the publication, Living on Karst: A Fragile Foundation. He is currently employed by Vecta Oil and Gas, Ltd. as an exploration geologist.

Daniel Fong is the President of KWI. Dan has been actively involved with KWI since its inception, and has previously served as a member of the Board of Directors and a former Treasurer. He holds a B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley, an M.S. from the University of Oklahoma, and a Ph.D. from Northwestern University. His research focuses on the ecology, evolution, and protection of groundwater crustaceans. He is a Fellow of the National Speleological Society, is also serving on the Board of Directors of the Cave Conservancy of the Virginias, and is founder and managing editor of the on-line journal Speleobiology Notes. Dan is an Associate Professor in and a former chair of the Department of Biology at American University in Washington, D.C.

William B. 'Will' White has been a member of the KWI Board since the its formation, and has served as the Vice President for Research and is the Executive Vice President. Will holds a BS degree (Chemistry) from Juniata College and a PhD (Geochemistry) from Penn State. Will’s research interest span a range of topics in materials science and geoscience. The former includes crystal chemistry, infrared and Raman spectroscopy, structure and properties of glass, and phosphors and other optical materials. The geosciences include application of condensed matter physics to mineralogy and various environmental issues including nuclear waste and mine land remediation as well as, of course, problems dealing with caves and karst. Cave and karst research includes both field and laboratory investigations with field work mostly in the Appalachians and the Mammoth Cave area. Will has published more than 400 papers in the technical journals and is author or coauthor of ten books. He is a fellow of the AAAS, the Mineralogical Society of America and the NSS. Will spent 40 years on the Penn State faculty (1962-2002) and has been emeritus professor since his retirement.