Kenneth O Hill received his primary education at the American School in Guadalajara, Mexico and his secondary education at Upper Canada College in Toronto, Canada. He earned Bachelor’s, Master’s, and PhD degrees from McMaster University.

In 1968, Hill joined the Defense Research Telecommunications Establishment as a defense scientist. The same year, DRTE became the Communications Research Centre where he served as a research scientist; group leader Optical Data Storage and Signal Processing; Manager, Optical Communications; and Director, Optical Communications and Electrophotonics. In 1992, Hill became Principal Scientist.

Hill has contributed to the development of fiber optic communications technology in the fields of nonlinear effects in optical fibers, passive optical fiber devices, modal noise, and optical waveguide photo-sensitivity. He has published extensively in the scientific literature, given many conference contributed and invited oral presentations and has been granted several patents. He is a Fellow of OSA, an ex-officio member of the Optical Fiber Communications Conference Steering Committee, Technical Co-Chair for OFC'96, a member of the Frederic Ives Medal Committee (1996), and Associate Editor, IEEE/OSA Journal of Lightwave Technologies and IEEE Photonic Technology Letters. In 1996, he received the John Tyndall Award “for discovery of photosensitivity in optical fibers and its application to Bragg gratings used in device applications in optical communications and sensor systems.”