Kristina M. Johnson
Dr. Kristina M. Johnson was the 16th President of the Ohio State University with oversight of five campuses, approximately 65,000 students, 37,000 faculty and staff, a world renowned academic medical center, and Division 1 athletics program in the Big Ten conference. Ohio State has an annual operating budget of $9Bn and extension offices throughout all 88 counties in Ohio. During her three years as president, Dr. Johnson and her colleagues increased research expenditures by 42%, reversed the trend of faculty attrition and raised over $2Bn, including several hundred million for student scholarships and fellowships.
Prior to Ohio State, Dr. Johnson was the 13th Chancellor of the State University of New York (SUNY) from September 2017 until July of 2020. With 64 college and university campuses, SUNY is the nation’s largest comprehensive system of public higher education. It serves nearly 1.4 million students annually, and employs more than 90,000 faculty and staff.
Dr. Johnson has a distinguished record of achievement in higher education, government and private industry. Before joining SUNY, Dr. Johnson co-founded and served as CEO of Cube Hydro Partners, LLC, and a clean-energy infrastructure company focused on building, upgrading and operating hydropower plants in North America. Cube Hydro Partners was successfully sold to Ontario Partners Group in 2019 for $1.12Bn.
Prior to Cube Hydro, Dr. Johnson was appointed by President Obama and unanimously confirmed by the 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 $10.5 billion energy and environment portfolio, including $37 Bn from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009.
As Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs at Johns Hopkins University from 2007 to 2009, Dr. Johnson had direct oversight of the academic operations and budget of nine schools that included leading interdisciplinary programs, academic centers, and institutes. She led a university-wide strategic planning process, "Framework for the Future," and bolstered leadership in research, new initiatives, and graduate programs. She also launched the Mosaic Initiative to recruit outstanding faculty including under-represented minorities, the Discovery Grant Program for faculty-led initiatives, and successfully managed the university’s ten-year Middle States Accreditation review.
As Dean of the Pratt School of Engineering (Pratt) at Duke University from 1999 to 2007, Dr. Johnson increased undergraduate enrollment by 20 percent, doubled the number of graduate students, and tripled research expenditures and Pratt’s physical infrastructure through the design and construction of the world-class Fitzpatrick Center for Interdisciplinary Engineering, Medicine, and Applied Sciences.
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. Previous recipients include Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, and Orville Wright. She is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Inventors and the National Inventors Hall of Fame (2015).
Dr. Johnson holds 118 U.S. and international patents, has published 149 refereed papers and proceedings, and five honorary degrees. Dr. Johnson received her B.S. with distinction, M.S. and Ph.D. 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, Dr. 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.
Dr. Johnson is married to Ms. Veronica Meinhard and they live in Washington, DC.