engineering

Kristina M. Johnson

Kristina M. Johnson is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Kristina M. Johnson rather than just read about it. In short: Kristina M. Johnson (born May 7, 1957) is an American electrical engineer.

Key takeaways

Kristina M. Johnson belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Kristina M. Johnson to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Kristina M. Johnson from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Kristina M. Johnson (born May 7, 1957) is an American electrical engineer. She served as the 16th president of Ohio State University from 2020 to 2023 and as the 13th chancellor of the State University of New York from 2017 to 2020. She has knowledge in the development of optoelectronic processing systems, 3-D imaging, and color-management systems. She was elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

Early life and education Johnson was born in St. Louis, Missouri, and grew up in Denver, Colorado. 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 Ohio State University 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.

Career After the postdoctoral fellowship, Johnson was appointed assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder in 1985, where she co-founded the National Science Foundation (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. In 2009, Johnson was appointed by President Obama as the Under Secretary of Energy for Energy and Environment at the United States Department of Energy with the unanimous consent of the United States Senate. 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 (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 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, Guidant Corporation, AES Corporation, and Boston Scientific. She is currently a member of the Board of Directors of Cisco Systems. In 2019, she resigned from the board of AES Corporation amid criticism of the company's pollution in Puerto Rico.

State University of New York 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 Ohio State University.

Ohio State University Under her presidency at Ohio State, research spending increased by 42%, and faculty attrition was reversed. In addition, significant funds were raised for the university and scholarships increased. In 2023, Johnson "shocked the Ohio State University community" when she resigned from her position as president "just halfway through her contract". According to The Columbus Dispatch, this was due to Johnson deciding "she could no longer work with Les Wexner and certain trustees who are loyal to him and who push for his interests". Sources told The Columbus Dispatch that "Johnson and university leaders agreed not to speak publicly about the details surrounding her resignation", and she was replaced by Walter E. Carter Jr. the following school year.

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

Awards and honors 1993, first woman awarded the International Dennis Gabor Award for creativity in modern optics. 2003, Fellow of the IEEE "for contributions to optoelectronic processing systems and liquid crystal devices". 2004, Society of Women Engineers Achievement Award, the highest honor of the Society. 2008, John Fritz Medal. 2010, ABIE Award for Technical Leadership from the Anita Borg Institute. 2014, inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame. 2015, elected to the National Inventors Hall of Fame for her work developing polarization-control technologies. 2016, elected to the National Academy of Engineering. 2017, awarded an honorary doctorate by NUI Galway. 2021, received the IEEE Mildred Dresselhaus Medal, recognizing outstanding technical contributions in science and engineering of great impact. 2025, recipient of the National Medal of Technology and Innovation.

Further reading Busch-Vishniac, Ilene; Busch, Lauren; Tietjen, Jill (2024). "Chapter 36. Kristina Johnson". Women in the National Inventors Hall of Fame: The First 50 Years. Springer Nature. ISBN 9783031755255.

References

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Kristina M. Johnson

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Kristina M. Johnson claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Kristina M. Johnson before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Kristina M. Johnson ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Kristina M. Johnson

In research: Kristina M. Johnson appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Kristina M. Johnson in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Kristina M. Johnson is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1957 births, Achievement Award Recipients of the Society of Women Engineers, American corporate directors, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Kristina M. Johnson outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Ask Teacher Smith questions about this articleOpens your AI tutor with a question about “Kristina M. Johnson” →

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study Kristina M. Johnson in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Kristina M. Johnson means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Kristina M. Johnson out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Kristina M. Johnson in simple terms?

Kristina M. Johnson (born May 7, 1957) is an American electrical engineer.

Why does Kristina M. Johnson matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Kristina M. Johnson?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Kristina M. Johnson.