Noonan Named Associate Head of Chemistry
Carnegie Mellon University Professor Kevin Noonan has been named associate head for the Department of Chemistry in the Mellon College of Science. The appointment was effective June 1.
“Kevin’s accomplishments and leadership as a researcher, teacher and mentor made him the ideal candidate for this position,” said Bruce Armitage, department head, professor and co-director of the Center for Nucleic Acid Science and Technology.
In his new role, Noonan will oversee the Department of Chemistry's infrastructure and instrumentation and will work with its Graduate and Undergraduate Program Committees on curriculum development.
“I am very excited to help the Department move forward with many new, exciting scientific and teaching opportunities in the coming years,” Noonan said. “Especially with the new Cloud Lab coming online, the Richard King Mellon Hall of Sciences currently under construction and the chance to develop and integrate new content into our courses.”
Noonan has been a faculty member in the Department of Chemistry since 2011. Noonan received his Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia and prior to joining Carnegie Mellon, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Cornell University. His lab works at the interface of organic, inorganic and organometallic chemistry and he collaborates with many research groups both at CMU and around the world. He has projects spanning several research areas which are all broadly related to energy research and the environment. Noonan is also a part of the Center for Alkaline-Based Energy Solutions or CABES, a Department of Energy (DOE) Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC).
In that work, the Noonan lab collaborates with chemists, physicists and engineers to build next generation electrolyzers and fuel cells. In particular, Noonan is developing materials for membranes, a critical component in electrolyzers — devices that use electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. The membrane conducts ions between two electrodes, facilitating the water splitting reaction. The approach is aimed at helping the field move away from precious-metal-based electrocatalysts and dramatically lower the cost of clean hydrogen fuel production by operating in basic media.
A widely respected teacher of numerous core and elective courses for undergraduate and graduate students, Noonan has co-chaired the Department of Chemistry’s Graduate Program Committee since 2018. He also provides outreach opportunities for graduate students to work with seventh-12th graders focusing on alternative energy technologies. He is currently a director of the local section of the American Chemical Society (ACS), and he hosts the local ACS Chemistry Olympiad for high school students in the area, a multi-tiered chemistry competition.