Leo C. Kempel (born October 1965) is an American electrical engineer and University Distinguished Professor at Michigan State University. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for his contributions to conformal antenna design and electromagnetic composite materials, and served as the ninth dean of the MSU College of Engineering from 2014 to 2024.
Education and career Kempel received a B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Cincinnati in 1989, where he participated in a cooperative education program at General Dynamics. He received an M.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan in 1990 and a Ph.D. from Michigan in 1994.
After completing his doctorate, Kempel worked at Mission Research Corporation in Valparaiso, Florida, leading research in computational electromagnetics, antenna design, scattering analysis, and high-power microwaves. He joined Michigan State University as an assistant professor in 1998. He currently holds the Dennis P. Nyquist Endowed Professorship in Electromagnetics and is a University Distinguished Professor.
At MSU, Kempel served as the founding director of the MSU High Performance Computing Center (2004–2006), associate dean for special initiatives (2006–2008), and associate dean for research (2008–2013). He served as acting dean beginning in March 2013 and was appointed the ninth dean of the College of Engineering in 2014. During his tenure as dean, the college's faculty expanded from 204 to 300 members and student enrollment grew from 4,500 to over 7,000. Under his leadership, two new departments were founded: the Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Department of Computational Mathematics, Science, and Engineering. Kempel stepped down as dean on September 30, 2024, returning to the faculty.
Kempel conducts research in computational electromagnetics, conformal antennas, and engineered materials for microwave applications. He is a member of the United States Air Force Scientific Advisory Board.
Books Kempel is co-author with John Volakis and Arindam Chatterjee of: Finite Element Method Electromagnetics: Antennas, Microwave Circuits, and Scattering Applications (IEEE Press, 1998)
Awards and honors Withrow Distinguished Scholar Award, MSU College of Engineering, 2001 National Science Foundation CAREER Award, 2002 MSU Teacher-Scholar Award, 2002 Fellow of the Applied Computational Electromagnetics Society (ACES), 2009 Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), 2009 Fellow of the Engineering Society of Detroit, 2019 Dennis P. Nyquist Endowed Professorship in Electromagnetics, Michigan State University, 2020 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), 2021 Robert F. Banks Award for Institutional Leadership, Michigan State University, 2023 ECE Distinguished Alumni Educator Award, University of Michigan, 2024
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