Manki Kim
About this site.
Hello, this is a site of Manki Kim (김만기).
I am a Pappalardo Fellow at MIT department of physics. Starting from Sep, 2024, I will be a postdoctoral fellow at SITP, Stanford. My primary interests are string theory, string phenomenology, and cosmology.
Below, you can see my CV and email address.
Electronic Address
This is my complete academic CV
A few years ago, I was inspired by a number of articles and stories about CV of failure which led me to make my own version of CV of failure. I would try to keep CV of failure updated up to date.
Research statement I used for my first postdoc application.
Recently, I received a few requests to share my research statement that I used for my first postdoc application. Now that I think of the statement, there are a few places I want to change. But, I just decided to publicly share it in its original form.
Research statement I used for my second postdoc/first faculty application.
This is the research statement I used for my second postdoc application. I also wrote some future directions I am hoping to undertake, it would be amazing if some other people also find them interesting.
A rejection letter from Cornell.
This is a rejection letter I received from Cornell for my ph.d application.
A few topics I am interested in these days.
Below, I listed some topics that I am very interested in. This does not mean that I am working on all those topics or I have good ideas on how to make progress on these topics. I just find those topics very interesting. In my opinion, all of these questions are too big to answer with a few papers.
Can string theory populate meta stable de sitter vacua? Even if this is true, can we demonstrably control the proposed solutions that one may claim to find?
Can string theory provide vacua with reasonable particle physics and cosmological history?
Can string theory provide answers to problems that the EFT paradigm has difficult time to answer?
What are reasonably foreseeable experiments and related observables, which one can compute in string theory?
What is a non-perturbative definition of string theory?
Can one compute the superpotential in 4d N=1 compactifications of string theory exactly? I believe that this is in principle possible, with the help of holomorphy and various dualities. But what is the right recipe?
The exact superpotential should contain rich information about the spectrum of string excitations (both closed and open). How much can we learn about the string spectrums?
What is the connection between enumerative geometry and the exact superpotential?
Can we develop tools to compute string loop corrections to the low energy effective theories of string compactifications? Can string field theory help us in any way? (especially regarding the RR flux)
Can we develop tools to compute D terms and supersymmetry breaking terms in the effective theories of string compactifications? Can string field theory help us in any way?
How far can we push the developments of topological string theory/M/F-theory with 4d N=1 or 3d N=2 supersymmetries?
Can we better understand heterotic/F-theory duality, especially when there are non-Higgsable clusters in F-theory descriptions.
Here are some talks I gave (under constructions)