Kristina M Johnson

Kristina M. Johnson was appointed provost and senior vice president of academic affairs of The Johns Hopkins University on Sept. 1, 2007. An electrical engineer with 129 U.S. and foreign patents and co-founder of several start-up companies, she is the university’s 12th provost and the first woman to hold the university's second-ranking position.

Johnson had previously served since 1999 as dean of Duke University’s Pratt School of Engineering.

Under her leadership, the Pratt School experienced significant growth in both size and quality. Of 50 new faculty members recruited during her tenure, 14 won early career “young investigator” awards. The undergraduate student body grew 20 percent and strong graduate programs doubled in size.

Johnson oversaw planning, funding and construction of the 322,000-square-foot Fitzpatrick Center for Interdisciplinary Engineering, Medicine and Applied Sciences. The school's research expenditures tripled to $60 million and the endowment grew from $20 million to $200 million.

With more than 140 published articles, Johnson is known for pioneering work in the field of "smart pixel arrays," which has applications in displays, pattern recognition and high resolution sensors, including cameras. She holds more than 40 patents and is a co-founder of several start-up companies.

In 2007, Johnson was elected a fellow of SPIE, an international society of scientists and engineers working in optics and photonics, the science of light. She also is a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the Optical Society of America. In 2003, she was inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame. In 2004, she won the Achievement Award of the Society of Women Engineers.

Johnson graduated from Stanford University in 1981 with both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in electrical engineering. She earned her Ph.D. at Stanford in 1984.

She was on the faculty at the University of Colorado, Boulder, from 1985 to 1999, earning a National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award and winning promotion to professor. From 1993 to 1997, she directed an NSF Engineering Research Center for Optoelectronic Computing Systems run jointly by Colorado and Colorado State.

[Updated May 2008]