Kristina M. Johnson

Kristina M. Johnson has a distinguished record of achievement in higher education, government and private industry. As the 16th President of the Ohio State University, Johnson had oversight of five campuses, 65,000 students and 37,000 faculty and staff. During her three years as president, Johnson and her colleagues increased research expenditures by 49%, reversed the trend of faculty attrition and raised over $2B in philanthropic support, including several hundred million for student scholarships and fellowships.

Prior to Ohio State, Johnson was the 13th Chancellor of the State University of New York (SUNY). With 64 college and university campuses, SUNY is the nation’s largest comprehensive system of public higher education, serving 1.3M students and employing 90,000 faculty and staff. Her work at SUNY included hiring 16 presidents, launching PRODiG to hire 1,000 outstanding under-represented faculty including women in STEM, creating $4B in public-private partnerships with the New York Empire State Development agency and leading the COVID-19 task force that guided the 64 campuses through the March 2020 shutdown and certification plans to reopen in the fall.

Before joining SUNY, Johnson was CEO of Cube Hydro Partners, LLC, a clean-energy infrastructure company she co-founded that upgraded and operated hydropower plants in North America. Cube Hydro was sold to Ontario Power Generation in 2019.

Prior to Cube Hydro, Johnson was appointed by President Obama and unanimously confirmed by the United States Senate as Under Secretary of Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy. In this role, Johnson was responsible for unifying and managing a broad $10.5B energy and environment portfolio, including $37B from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Johnson currently co-chairs the National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship to the U.S. Secretary of Commerce and co-led the development of a National Entrepreneurship Strategy.

Selected academic awards include the Presidential Young Investigator Award (1985), Fulbright Faculty Scholar (1993), Dennis Gabor Prize for creativity and innovation in modern optics (1993) and the John Fritz Medal (2008), widely considered the highest award given by the engineering societies. Johnson is also a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Inventors and the National Inventors Hall of Fame (2015).

Johnson holds 46 U.S. patents, has published 149 refereed papers and proceedings, and holds five honorary degrees. She received her BS with distinction, MS and PhD in electrical engineering from Stanford University. After a NATO post-doctoral fellowship at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, she joined the faculty at the University of Colorado at Boulder (CU) in 1985. In 1987, Johnson co-founded the National Science Foundation’s Engineering Research Center (NSF/ERC) for Optoelectronics Computing Systems Center, directing the Center from 1994 to 1998. She co-founded ColorLink, Inc. in 1995, which was sold to RealD, and is responsible for 3D effects in movies such as Avatar, Gravity and hundreds of other films.

Johnson is an alumna of the 1975 International Science and Engineering Fair.

She joined the Society’s Board of Trustees in 2024.