[1] In 1992 he received his PhD cum laude at TU Delft; his promoter was Hans Mooij [de].

In April 2012 his TU Delft research group presented experimental results that provided potential "signatures" of Majorana fermion quasiparticles.

[5] In 2018 his research group claimed to have proved the definitive existence of Majorana particles in a Nature publication.

[11] Two of the Majorana research papers involving Leo Kouwenhoven's group at QuTech were retracted due to data irregularities, leading to a couple of investigations by the TU Delft's Research Integrity Committee (CWI) and the Dutch Body for Scientific Integrity (LOWI) between 2020 and 2023.

[12] Kouwenhoven has six sisters and is married to Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam professor Marleen Huysman.