Kristina M. Johnson (born May 7, 1957) is an American business executive, engineer, academic, and former government official who served as the 13th chancellor of the State University of New York from September 2017 until June 2020. In June 2020, the

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...

Board of Trustees named her as the university's 16th president, succeeding the retiring Michael V. Drake. She has been a leader in the development of optoelectronic processing systems, 3-D imaging, and color-management systems.

Early life and education

Johnson was born in

St. Louis St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...

Missouri Missouri is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking 21st in land area, it is bordered by eight states (tied for the most with Tennessee): Iowa to the north, Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee to the east, Arkansas t ...

and grew up in

Denver Denver () is a consolidated city and county, the capital, and most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Its population was 715,522 at the 2020 census, a 19.22% increase since 2010. It is the 19th-most populous city in the Unit ...

Colorado Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the wes ...

. As a senior at Thomas Jefferson High School, she won the Denver City and Colorado State science fair competition, and placed second in the Physics division and a first place award from the Air Force at the International Science Fair for her project entitled, "Holographic Study of the Sporangiophore Phycomyces". Johnson grew up in a large, athletic family. She competed in Tae Kwon Do and learned to play lacrosse on the boys' lacrosse team. Her paternal grandfather, Charles W. Johnson, attended the

and played football for the Buckeyes in 1896; Johnson would eventually become president there. As an undergraduate at Stanford University, Johnson founded the women's club lacrosse team (now varsity) and played on the field hockey team, trying out for the U.S. Team in 1978. In 1979, Johnson was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease and turned her focus to an academic career. Johnson received her B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford, and was a postdoctoral fellow at

Trinity College Dublin , name_Latin = Collegium Sanctae et Individuae Trinitatis Reginae Elizabethae juxta Dublin , motto = ''Perpetuis futuris temporibus duraturam'' (Latin) , motto_lang = la , motto_English = It will last i ...

Career

After the postdoctoral fellowship, Johnson was appointed assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the

University of Colorado Boulder The University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder, CU, or Colorado) is a public research university in Boulder, Colorado. Founded in 1876, five months before Colorado became a state, it is the flagship university of the University of Colorado sy ...

in 1985, where she co-founded the

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National ...

(NSF) Engineering Research Center (ERC) for Optoelectronic Computing Systems and spun off several companies from her research laboratory including ColorLink, Inc which was later sold to RealD, responsible for the technology that helped re-launch the 3D movie industry. Additionally, she co-founded the Colorado Advanced Technology Institute Center of Excellence in Optoelectronics. In 1999, Johnson was appointed Dean of the School of Engineering at Duke University, which would be later named for distinguished alumnus, Edmund T. Pratt Jr., CEO emeritus of Pfizer Corporation. In 2007, Johnson became the Senior Vice-President and Provost of

Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hemisphere. It consi ...

. In 2009, Johnson was appointed by

President Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the ...

as the

Under Secretary of Energy for Energy and Environment The Under Secretary of Energy for Infrastructure, previously the Undersecretary for Energy, is a position within the United States Department of Energy. The under secretary oversees the department's energy and environment programs, including envi ...

at the

United States Department of Energy The United States Department of Energy (DOE) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government that oversees U.S. national energy policy and manages the research and development of nuclear power and nuclear weapons in the United Stat ...

with the unanimous consent of the

United States Senate The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States. The composition and pow ...

. She is the founder of Enduring Hydro, a hydropower-focused energy firm. The firm has a joint venture with the New York City-based private equity firm

I Squared Capital I Squared Capital is a private equity firm focusing on global infrastructure investments. The company invests in energy, utilities, transport and telecom projects in North America, Europe and select high growth economies, such as India and China. ...

(called Cube Hydro Partners), that owns and operates 19 hydropower plants in the Eastern United States. Johnson was elected a member of the

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of ...

in 2016 for the development and deployment of liquid crystal on silicon display technologies, the basis for high-speed optoelectronic 3D imaging. Johnson has been a director of Minerals Technologies Inc.,

Nortel Nortel Networks Corporation (Nortel), formerly Northern Telecom Limited, was a Canadian multinational telecommunications and data networking equipment manufacturer headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. It was founded in Montreal, Quebec, ...

Guidant Corporation Guidant Corporation, part of Boston Scientific and Abbott Labs, designs and manufactures artificial cardiac pacemakers, implantable cardioverter-defibrillators, stents, and other cardiovascular medical products. Their company headquarters is lo ...

AES Corporation The AES Corporation is an American utility and power generation company. It owns and operates power plants, which it uses to generate and sell electricity to end users and intermediaries like utilities and industrial facilities. AES is headquart ...

, and

Boston Scientific Boston Scientific Corporation ("BSC"), incorporated in Delaware, is a biomedical/biotechnology engineering firm and multinational manufacturer of medical devices used in interventional medical specialties, including interventional radiology, i ...

. She is currently a member of the Board of Directors of

Cisco Systems Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational digital communications technology conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, manufactures, and sells networking hardware, ...

. In 2019, she resigned from the board of AES Corporation amid criticism of the company's pollution in Puerto Rico. In April 2017 Johnson was appointed chancellor of the 64-school State University of New York, assuming the role in September. On June 3, 2020 it was announced that Johnson would resign from her position at the State University of New York to become the next President of

. On November 28, 2022 Johnson announced that she would be resigning from her position of President of

at the end of academic year. The resignation came at the request of the university's board of trustees following an investigation into employee complaints.

Personal life

Johnson is married to Veronica Meinhard, Founder and President of Juniper Philanthropy Partners.

Awards and honors

* In 1993, Johnson was the first woman to be awarded the

International Dennis Gabor Award The International Dennis Gabor Award (1993-2010) was awarded by the NOVOFER Foundation of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences for outstanding scientific achievements with practical applications, with a clear positive attitude towards international ...

for creativity in modern optics. *In 2003, Johnson was named a Fellow of the IEEE "for contributions to optoelectronic processing systems and liquid crystal devices". *In 2004, Johnson received the Society of Women Engineers Achievement Award, the highest honor of the Society. * In 2008, she received the

John Fritz Medal The John Fritz Medal has been awarded annually since 1902 by the American Association of Engineering Societies (AAES) for "outstanding scientific or industrial achievements". The medal was created for the 80th birthday of John Fritz, who lived betw ...

. * In 2010, Johnson was the winner of the ABIE Award for Technical Leadership from the Anita Borg Institute. * In 2014, Johnson was inducted into the

Colorado Women's Hall of Fame The Colorado Women's Hall of Fame is a non-profit, volunteer organization that recognizes women who have contributed to the history of the U.S. state of Colorado. As of 2020, 170 women have been inducted. History There was a short-lived recogniti ...

. * In 2015, Johnson was elected to the

National Inventors Hall of Fame The National Inventors Hall of Fame (NIHF) is an American not-for-profit organization, founded in 1973, which recognizes individual engineers and inventors who hold a U.S. patent of significant technology. Besides the Hall of Fame, it also oper ...

for her work developing polarization-control technologies. * In 2016, Johnson was elected to the

. * In 2017, Johnson was awarded an honorary doctorate by

NUI Galway The University of Galway ( ga, Ollscoil na Gaillimhe) is a public research university located in the city of Galway, Ireland. A tertiary education and research institution, the university was awarded the full five QS stars for excellence in 201 ...

. * In 2021, Johnson received the

IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operat ...

Mildred Dresselhaus Mildred Dresselhaus''Mildred Dresselhaus'' was elected in 1974

Medal,Ohio State President Makes Increasing Interdisciplinary Research and Diversity Her Priorities – IEEE spectrum
/ref> recognizing outstanding technical contributions in science and engineering of great impact.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Johnson, Kristina M. American electrical engineers Engineering educators Stanford University alumni Duke University faculty University of Colorado faculty Living people Women inventors Directors of Nortel American corporate directors United States Department of Energy officials John Fritz Medal recipients Women corporate directors 1957 births Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering

Johnson Johnson is a surname of Anglo-Norman origin meaning "Son of John". It is the second most common in the United States and 154th most common in the world. As a common family name in Scotland, Johnson is occasionally a variation of ''Johnston'', a ...

Women heads of universities and colleges LGBT people from Missouri Fellow Members of the IEEE Fellows of Optica (society) SPIE Presidents of Ohio State University Boston Scientific people