While professor at the Scripps Research Institute in the early 1990s he pioneered modern ligation methods for the total chemical synthesis of proteins.
[4] At the University of Chicago Kent and his junior colleagues pioneered the elucidation of protein structures by quasi-racemic & racemic crystallography.
Following his post-doctoral work in the laboratory of Robert Bruce Merrifield at the Rockefeller University, Dr. Kent continued research there as an assistant professor through 1981.
In addition to his academic achievements, in the 1990s he was the founder of two San Francisco Bay Area companies: Ciphergen Biosytems and Gryphon Sciences.
In May 2016 the Journal of Peptide Science, edited by Luis Moroder, published a Festschrift in celebration of his 70th birthday.