Yonatan (Yoni) Kahn
Assistant Professor, Department of Physics
Yonatan Kahn is an assistant professor in the Department of Physics. He is a theoretical physicist whose research is focused on dark matter and its detection strategies, as well as the theory of machine learning from a high-energy physics perspective. Prior to joining the Faculty of Arts & Science, Kahn was an assistant professor at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and held postdoctoral positions at the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics (KICP) at the University of Chicago and Princeton University before that.
Professor Kahn received his PhD in 2015 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He holds degrees in music, physics, and mathematics from Northwestern University (BA, BMus 2009) and completed Part III of the Mathematical Tripos with Distinction at the University of Cambridge in 2010, supported by a Churchill Scholarship. In 2016, he received the American Physical Society’s J.J. and Noriko Sakurai Dissertation Award in Theoretical Particle Physics, and in 2022 he was selected as a Kavli Frontiers of Science Fellow by the National Academy of Sciences in the US.
Kahn’s recent work includes several review articles on novel detection methods for dark matter, published in Reports on Progress in Physics, Nature Reviews Physics and Annual Reviews of Nuclear and Particle Science. He has a strong interest in physics education and is the co-author of "Conquering the Physics GRE," a comprehensive study guide for preparing for the Physics GRE exam.