Stephen Leonard

Partner / Patent Agent, Aird & McBurney LP

Stephen is Partner and Patent Agent at Aird & McBurney, one of Canada’s leading intellectual property boutique firms, and has been a CDL mentor in the Biomedical Engineering and Neuro streams since 2020.

Stephen advises startups, scale-ups, large companies, academic institutions and teaching hospitals on patent protection and IP strategy. With a PhD in physics, Stephen brings a natural curiosity to his patent practice and enjoys the challenge of protecting complex inventions that span multiple disciplines. His entrepreneurial background – including experience in startup formation and technology commercialization – gives him a practical and strategic approach to intellectual property development, allowing him to help clients build valuable patent portfolios in in fields such as medtech, deep tech, AI, optics, computer vision, robotics, telecom and fintech.

Stephen is also a Venture Advisor at Leva Capital, a Canadian venture capital firm that makes investments in medtech and digital health ventures. Prior to joining Aird & McBurney, Stephen was a partner at Hill and Schumacher, a boutique IP firm, and co-founded Qvella, a Canadian diagnostics company that developed technologies enabling the rapid diagnosis and treatment of sepsis.

In his spare time, Stephen is an avid amateur astrophotographer and enjoys capturing images of deep space from his backyard.