Rate My Professor Joshua Cohn

Joshua L. Cohn is a Professor in the Department of Physics and Senior Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Education in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Miami. He received his B.A. with honors in Physics from Wesleyan University in 1983 and his Ph.D. in Physics with distinction from the University of Michigan in 1989, where his doctoral thesis focused on low-temperature electronic transport in thin bismuth films. After completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the Naval Research Laboratory, where he investigated transport properties of high-temperature cuprate superconductors, Cohn joined the University of Miami in 1992 as an Assistant Professor. He progressed through the academic ranks, becoming Associate Professor in 1998, full Professor in 2004, Associate Chair from 2010 to 2013, Chair of the Physics Department from 2013 to 2021, and assuming his current administrative position in 2022.

Cohn's research centers on the low-temperature electronic, magnetic, and thermal properties of novel materials exhibiting interesting physics, including quasi-one-dimensional metals, helimagnetic insulators, correlated transition-metal oxides, thin films, and thermoelectric materials. His lab employs techniques such as precise measurements of electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, and thermoelectric effects on millimeter-sized crystals cooled to cryogenic temperatures, as well as fabrication and analysis of thin films. Key publications include “Ballistic magnon heat conduction and possible Poiseuille flow in the helimagnetic insulator Cu₂OSeO₃” (Physical Review B, 2017; Editor’s Choice), “Spin phases of the helimagnetic insulator Cu₂OSeO₃ probed by magnon heat conduction” (Physical Review B, 2019), “Extreme Thermopower Anisotropy and Interchain Transport in the Quasi-One-Dimensional Metal Li₂Mo₃O₁₀” (Physical Review Letters, 2014), and “Giant Nernst Effect and Bipolarity in the Quasi-One-Dimensional Metal Mo₅Li₃O₁₀” (Physical Review Letters, 2012). With 79 refereed journal articles, his scholarship has earned 6,143 citations and an h-index of 35 according to Google Scholar. Cohn has received the University of Miami 2011 Provost Research Award, the American Physical Society Outstanding Referee award in 2009, and other honors. He serves as Associate Editor for Frontiers in Physics and has co-edited research topics and conference proceedings.