Young-Kee Kim

Young-Kee Kim is a South Korea-born American physicist and Louis Block Distinguished Service Professor of Physics at the University of Chicago. She is chair of the Department of Physics at the university.

Education
Young-Kee Kim was born and raised in South Korea.


 * 1984 B.S. Physics, Korea University
 * 1986 M.S. Physics, Korea University
 * 1990 Ph.D. Physics, University of Rochester

Career
As an experimental particle physicist, she has devoted much of her research work to understanding the origin of mass for fundamental particles by studying the W boson and the top quark, two of the most massive elementary particles, at the Tevatron’s CDF experiment, and by studying the Higgs boson that gives mass to elementary particles at the LHC’s ATLAS experiment. She also works on accelerator science, playing a leadership role in NSF's Science and Technology Center, the Center for Bright Beams. She was co-Spokesperson of the CDF collaboration between 2004 and 2006 and Deputy Director of Fermilab between 2006 and 2013.

She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2017), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2012), the American Physical Society (2004) and an Alfred P. Sloan fellow (1997). She received the Ho-Am Prize (2005), the Korea University Alumni Award (2012) and the Rochester Distinguished Scholar Medal (2010). She was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2022.

Work
Young-Kee Kim is an experimental particle physics. She has devoted much of her research work to understanding the origin of mass for fundamental particles by studying the W boson and the top quark, two of the most massive elementary particles, at the Tevatron’s CDF experiment, and by studying the Higgs boson that gives mass to elementary particles at the LHC’s ATLAS experiment.


 * 1990–1995: Postdoc Fellow / Research Scientist, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
 * 1996–2000: Assistant Prof. of Physics, University of California, Berkeley
 * 2000–2001: Associate Prof. of Physics, University of California, Berkeley
 * 2002: Professor of Physics, University of California, Berkeley
 * 2003–Present: Professor of Physics, University of Chicago
 * 2006–2013: Deputy Director, Fermilab
 * 2016–Present: Chair, the Department of Physics, University of Chicago
 * 2017–Present: Louis Block Distinguished Service Professor of Physics, University of Chicago

Awards

 * 1987: Rush Rhees Fellow
 * 1997: Alfred P. Sloan Fellow
 * 2004: Fellow of the American Physical Society
 * 2005: Ho-Am Prize
 * 2010: Rochester Distinguished Scholar Medal
 * 2012: Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
 * 2012: Korea University Alumni Award
 * 2012: Leadership Award, Women in Science, Chicago Council of Science and Technology
 * 2017: Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Research positions

 * 1993–1999: Leader, CDF W Mass Analysis Group
 * 1995–1996: Co-Leader, CDF Electroweak Physics Group
 * 2000: Associate Project Manager, CDF Run II Upgrade
 * 2001: Associate Head, CDF Run II Detector Operations
 * 2002: Co-Leader, CDF Level-3 Trigger System
 * 2003–2004: Co-Leader, CDF Top Mass Analysis Group
 * 2004–2006: Co-Spokesperson, CDF Collaboration at the Tevatron proton-antiproton collider at Fermilab