Horst Hahn

About

Since Mid March 2025, Horst Hahn is Special Advisor to the Senior Vice President for Research, Innovation & Impact at the University of Arizona in Tucson. He also holds a tenured professorship at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Arizona. Prior to his current position, Horst held a position as Distinguished Materials Visiting Professor at The University of Oklahoma. In addition, he is Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Institute of Nanotechnology. From April 2004 to September 2022, he was Executive Director of the Institute for Nanotechnology at KIT and Director of the Research Laboratory Nanomaterials located at the Technische Universität Darmstadt and jointly operated by Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and Technische Universität Darmstadt. Starting in 2008 until 2021, Horst Hahn served as Head of the Program Science and Technology of Nanosystems at KIT. From 2011 to 2015, Horst Hahn was Founding Director of the Helmholtz Institute Ulm for Electrochemical Energy Storage.

Horst studied Materials Science at the Universität des Saarlandes and received his Ph.D. from the Technische Universität Berlin. He was a post doctoral fellow at the Universität des Saarlandes working in the area of interfaces and nanocrystalline metals. From 1985 to 1987 Dr. Hahn was a Research Associate in the Materials Science Division at Argonne National Laboratory where he established a research program on nanocrystalline ceramics. Subsequently, he was Research Assistant Professor in the Materials Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for two years. In 1992, he became Associate Professor of Materials Science at Rutgers-The State University of New Jersey. From 1992 to 2004 Horst Hahn was Full Professor (C4) in the Department of Materials Science at Technische Universität Darmstadt and Head of the Thin Films Division. For three years Professor Hahn served as Chairman of the Department.

He is elected Member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, and served as Senator for the Engineering Science section of Leopoldina for 8 years, Foreign Member of the US National Academy of Engineering, Fellow of the US National Academy of Inventors, and Member of the European Academy of Sciences. In 2024, he was elected Foreign Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE), of the Indian National Academy of Sciences (INSA, effective January 2025) and Honorary Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bengaluru. He is Fellow of the Materials Research Society (MRS), Pittsburgh, USA. Horst received the Heyn Denkmünze, the highest award of DGM (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Materialkunde) and the Robert-Franklin-Mehl Award of TMS.

Since 2005, Horst Hahn is Distinguished Professor of the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, India. In addition, he is Honorary Professor at the University of Hyderabad, India, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, China, and Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, China. From 2019 to 2022, Horst was Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of California Irvine.

Horst Hahn was one of the co-founders of SusTech Darmstadt GmbH&Co KG, a start-up company in the area of sustainable chemistry and nanotechnology, developing products based on functionalized nanoparticulate systems.

His main research interests are in the areas of synthesis, characterization and structural and functional properties of nanostructured materials in the form of thin films, nanoparticles and bulk structures. The major research projects in his group are related to metallic nanoglasses, cluster-assembled materials, high entropy (HE) multi-cationic and -anionic materials (for example, HE-oxides, HE-oxyfluorides), tunability of functional properties (for example, tunable magnetism), printed electronics and materials for electrochemical energy storage and energy conversion.

Employment

• University of Arizona Special Advisor to SVPRII and Professor MSE
  2025 - Present
• The University of Oklahoma Distinguished Materials Visiting Professor
  2022 - 2025
• Karlsruher Institut für Technologie Executive Director
  2004 - 2022
• Technische Universität Darmstadt Full Professor
  1992 - 2004
• Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey Associate Professor
  1990 - 1992
• University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Research Assistant Professor
  1987 - 1990
• Argonne National Laboratory Research Associate
  1985 - 1987

Education

Education history is unavailable.

Projects & Funding

Projects & funding information is unavailable.

Publications

Publications are unavailable.