The Delft University Fund has awarded the 2008 'UfD-Leermeesterprijs' to Leo Kouwenhoven. The Leermeesterprijs is awarded on an annual basis to a TU Delft professor whose record of teaching and resarch excellence serve as a source of inspiration to students and PhD researchers alike.

Kouwenhoven studied applied sciences at TU Delft, obtaining his doctorate with distinction in 1992. From 1993 to 1998 he was affiliated with the University as a Fellow of the Royal Netherlands Academy of the Arts and Sciences and spent part of this period in Berkeley. In 1999, he was offered a professorship at Harvard but he turned the offer down in favour of a professorship at TU Delft. Since 2001, he has been an Associate at Harvard's Department of Physics.

Kouwenhoven was awarded a VICI grant by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research in 2002 and in 2003 he was granted nine million euros by the FOM Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter for a 10-year research project into quantum information, in collaboration with Leiden University. He became a member of the Royal Netherlands Academic of the Arts and Sciences in 2006 and won the prestigious Spinoza prize in 2007. Recently Kouwenhoven was appointed 'Universiteitshoogleraar' of TU Delft.