Profile
KMJP
Kristina M Johnson, PhD
Past President
The Ohio State University
Dr Johnson has a distinguished record of achievement in higher education, government and private industry. From 2020 to 2023, she 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 a Division 1 athletics program in the Big Ten conference. Ohio State has an annual operating budget of $9 billion 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 $2 billion, 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.
Before joining SUNY, Dr Johnson was founding CEO of Cube Hydro Partners, LLC, a clean-energy infrastructure company focused on building, upgrading and operating hydropower plants in North America.
Prior to Cube Hydro, Dr Johnson was appointed by President Obama and unanimously confirmed by the US Senate as Under Secretary of Energy at the US Department of Energy. A member of the National Academy of Engineering, Dr Johnson holds 46 US patents and five honorary degrees and was awarded the John Fritz Medal.
Dr Johnson received her BS with distinction, MS and PhD in electrical engineering from Stanford University. She joined the faculty at the University of Colorado at Boulder (CU) and co-founded the National Science Foundation’s Engineering Research Center (NSF/ERC) for Optoelectronics Computing Systems Center, where she spun-out ColorLink Inc, which was sold to RealD and is responsible for 3D effects in movies such as Avatar and hundreds of other films. She is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a 2015 inductee into the US Inventors Hall of Fame and a member of the National Academy of Inventors.
Dr Johnson is married to Ms Veronica Meinhard, and they live in Washington, DC.