Young-Kee Kim, the Albert A. Michelson Distinguished Service Professor of Physics at the University of Chicago, is a leading experimental particle physicist whose work has been central to understanding the origin of mass for fundamental particles through the Higgs mechanism, using the world’s highest-energy colliders. She has made seminal contributions to precision measurements of the W boson and top quark masses at Fermilab’s CDF experiment, and subsequently to studies of Higgs boson properties, including its decay modes and interactions, at CERN’s ATLAS experiment. Her research is guided by the principle that a comprehensive understanding of the Higgs mechanism requires the synthesis of these complementary measurements.
Kim co-led the CDF collaboration of 600 physicists (2004-2006). She was Deputy Director (2006-2013) and Interim Director (2025) of Fermilab, and President of the American Physical Society (2024).
Kim is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a foreign member of the Korean Academy of Science and Technology, and a recipient of the Ho-Am Prize in Science.
Professional position
- Albert A. Michelson Distinguished Service Professor of Physics, Enrico Fermi Institute, University of Chicago
