Horst Hahn joined the University of Oklahoma as Distinguished Materials Visiting Professor in October 2022 after retiring from his position at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). At KIT, he served as the Executive Director of the Institute for Nanotechnology (INT) since 2004 and continues to be associated with INT as a KIT Distinguished Senior Fellow.

Horst earned his Ph.D. from the Technische Universität Berlin in 1982. Following a postdoctoral position at the Universität des Saarlandes, he relocated to the United States and held various positions at the Argonne National Laboratory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Rutgers University. Since 1992, he has been a full professor at the Technische Universität Darmstadt. From 2012 to 2022, he was the Principal Investigator and head of a research group on nanoglasses at the Herbert Gleiter Institute of Nanosciences at Nanjing University of Science and Technology. He is also a Distinguished Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras and has received Honorary Professorships at the University of Hyderabad in India, as well as Lanzhou University and Xi'an Jiaotong University in China. Additionally, from 2019 to 2022, he served as Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of California, Irvine, in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and the Physics Department.

Horst Hahn's research primarily focuses on defects and diffusion in metals and ceramics, nanostructured and amorphous materials, tailored and tunable properties of nanostructures, energy materials, and printed electronics. He has made significant contributions to the field and has authored/coauthored over 550 papers and holds 75 patents on nanomaterials, including materials for electrochemical energy storage and printed electronics. In recognition of his expertise and accomplishments, Horst Hahn has been elected as a Member of the German National Academy Leopoldina, the National Academy of Engineering, the European Academy of Sciences, and the National Academy of Inventors. He is also a Fellow of the Materials Research Society. Moreover, he has been honored with the Mehl Award from TMS and the Heyn Denkmünze from the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Materialkunde.