Kester Clarke is an associate professor in the Metallurgical and Materials Engineering Department at Colorado School of Mines and serves as the Forging Industry Education and Research Foundation Professor. He holds a joint appointment as a scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, is a visiting scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), and serves as the industry liaison officer for the Center for Advanced Non-Ferrous Structural Alloys. His research interests include alloy development, material deformation and fabrication processes, and the use of experimental and modeling methods to examine the effect of material processing history and microstructure on mechanical properties and performance.

Clarke holds a B.A. in psychology from Indiana University, a B.S. in materials science and engineering from Wayne State University, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in metallurgical and materials engineering from the Colorado School of Mines. He has worked as a consulting metallurgical engineer for Engel Metallurgical and as a senior engineer, research and development, for Caterpillar. He conducted postdoctoral research and was a scientist/R&D engineer in the Materials Science & Technology: Metallurgy group as the technical lead for thermal-mechanical processing of metals and metal component fabrication at LANL.

He is currently the chair of the TMS Education and Steels Committees, was previously the chair of the TMS Shaping & Forming Committee, and is a member of the TMS Phase Transformations, Nuclear Materials, and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committees. He has served as a Metallurgical and Materials Transactions key reader since 2011, was part of the study team for the TMS study Metamorphic Manufacturing: Shaping the Future of On-Demand Components, and serves as a mentor in the TMS Leadership Development Initiative.