Kevin Noonan completed his Bachelor's degree from Dalhousie University in Halifax in 2003. He moved to British Columbia two months later to begin his Ph.D. under the supervision of Derek Gates. He worked on the synthesis and living polymerization of phosphaalkene molecules. From there, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow with Geoffrey Coates at Cornell on Anion Exchange Membranes for Fuel Cell applications. He started at Carnegie Mellon in August 2011 as an Assistant Professor looking to design new ligands in catalysis and to develop new monomers for polymer synthesis.