Kevin Charles Leonard

Kevin C. Leonard is Professor of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering at the University of Kansas, with joint appointment at the Center for Environmentally Beneficial Catalysis. He leads research on sustainable electrochemical technologies for fuel and chemical production, with focus areas in electrocatalysis, scanning electrochemical microscopy, CO₂ utilization, and machine learning for catalyst discovery.

His research develops novel electrochemical systems for renewable hydrogen production, CO₂ conversion, and sustainable chemical synthesis. Current projects include federated learning approaches for catalyst discovery, CO₂-expanded electrolytes for chemical production, and scanning electrochemical microscopy for catalyst characterization.

Professor Leonard has received significant research funding from NSF, Department of Energy, and Cisco Systems. Awards include the ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering Lectureship Award and Army Research Office Young Investigator Award. He co-founded Avium, LLC to commercialize hydrogen production technology.

He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in chemical engineering fundamentals, kinetics, catalysis, and data science. Professor Leonard currently advises 7 graduate students working on electrocatalysis, machine learning applications, and electrochemical characterization techniques.