Leonid Barenboim conducts his research in computer science in the field of distributed algorithms. His PhD thesis (from Ben-Gurion University, supervised by Prof M. Elkin) deals with efficient symmetry-breaking algorithms for large-scale communication networks. He has co-authored numerous papers that were published in leading conferences including FOCS, STOC, PODC and ICALP and in various journals including JACM and DC. Three of these papers received best paper or best student paper awards. He has also coauthored a monograph on distributed graph coloring.

Barenboim has received several fellowships and prizes including the Adams PhD fellowship of the Israeli Academy of Sciences and Humanities, TAU Advanced Communication Center best thesis award (first place in a national competition), Intel prize, and Rector award for excellence in research. He has also taught courses at BGU on Distributed Algorithms Implementation and Object-Oriented Programming.