Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania he was a postdoctoral associate at IBM's T. J. Watson Research Center working with his mentor Matthew P. A. Fisher, among others.

Kane is notable for theoretically predicting the quantum spin Hall effect (originally in graphene) and what would later be known as topological insulators.

[1][2] He received the 2012 Dirac Prize, along with Shoucheng Zhang and Duncan Haldane, for their groundbreaking work on two- and three-dimensional topological insulators.

[5][6] He also shared one of the 2013 Physics Frontiers prizes with Laurens W. Molenkamp and Shoucheng Zhang for their work on topological insulators.

In 2019, was recognized with Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics with fellow University of Pennsylvania professor Eugene Mele, again for work on topological insulators.