Peter K. Kilpatrick is an American chemical engineer and academic administrator currently serving as the 16th president of the Catholic University of America since July 2022.
He previously served as provost of the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago from 2018 to 2022 and as dean of the Notre Dame College of Engineering from 2008 to 2018.
[1] His father was a founding member of the United States Air Force and so his family moved often including to Guam and Turkey.
[2] He was not raised Catholic but, at the age of 10, experienced a personal Great Awakening and asked his parents to purchase him a 10 volume set of books known as the Bible Series.
He received a Bachelor of Arts with a major in chemistry from Occidental College in 1978 and a Doctor of Philosophy in chemical engineering from the University of Minnesota in 1983.
[7] He was planning to retire and return to North Carolina, but received a phone call from a friend asking him to consider applying for the president's position at The Catholic University of America.
[2][1] He originally refused the proposal, citing his plans to retire to the home in Cary, North Carolina he built in 2018[1][2] and to earn a Doctor of Philosophy in theology.
[1][2][6] When their first child, Elisabeth, was born, they visited their local parish in Minneapolis to have her baptized and Kilpatrick began attending mass.