Rate My Professor Sebastian Kuhn

Sebastian Kuhn is Professor and Chair of the Physics Department at Old Dominion University, where he holds the Eminent Scholar position since 2007. His research specializes in experimental nuclear and particle physics, with a focus on nucleon structure, few-body nuclei, and instrumentation. Conducting experiments at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (JLab), Kuhn investigates electron scattering from high-momentum neutrons in deuterium, spin structure functions of the proton and deuteron, quark-hadron duality, the evolution of the Bjorken integral at low Q², deeply virtual Compton scattering, pion electroproduction, and short-range correlations in nuclei using detectors like CLAS and collaborations such as BoNuS and EG1.

Kuhn earned his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Bonn, Germany, in 1986, following his Diplom in Physics from Bonn in 1982 summa cum laude and Vordiplom from the University of Düsseldorf in 1977. His career commenced with a NATO/DAAD postdoctoral fellowship at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (1986-1988), followed by Acting Assistant Professor at Stanford University (1988-1992). At Old Dominion University, he advanced from Assistant Professor (1992-1997) to Associate Professor (1997-2003), Full Professor (2003-present), and Department Chair (since 2023). Awards include Fellowship of the American Physical Society (2007), Old Dominion University Annual Research Prize (2008), College of Sciences Faculty Excellence Award (2009), Shining Star Award (2010), and leadership as Chair of the Jefferson Lab User Group Board of Directors (2011) and elected member of the APS Executive Committee on Hadronic Physics (2008). Kuhn has co-authored hundreds of publications in journals including Nature, Physical Review Letters, and Physics Letters B, with key works such as 'Probing high-momentum protons and neutrons in neutron-rich nuclei' (Nature, 2018), 'Measurement of the proton spin structure at long distances' (Nature Physics, 2021), 'Detailed study of quark-hadron duality in spin structure functions of the proton and neutron' (Physical Review C, 2023), and editorship of proceedings on the Gerasimov-Drell-Hearn Sum Rule (2005). His contributions have advanced global analyses of spin-dependent parton distributions and hadronic physics.