Kristina M. Johnson, provost and senior vice president
for academic affairs, has been selected
to receive the John Fritz Medal, widely considered the
highest award in the engineering profession.
The honor, established more than a century ago and given to
such innovators as Thomas Edison,
Alexander Graham Bell, George Westinghouse and Orville
Wright, will be awarded to Johnson on May
5 by the American Association of Engineering Societies.
The medal will be presented during the association's
29th annual awards banquet and ceremony,
to be held at the National Academy of Engineering in
Washington, D.C.
"I am thrilled and extremely humbled to receive this
award," Johnson said. "This is really
special because it recognizes inventors, and I am happiest
when inventing. It is made even more special
by the fact that the 1906 recipient was George
Westinghouse, who my grandfather, Charles Johnson,
worked directly for as an engineer in the 1920s."
A master plaque for the John Fritz Medal states that
the award was established by the
professional associates and friends of John Fritz of
Bethlehem, Pa., on August 21, 1902, "to
perpetuate the memory of his achievements in industrial
progress."
Since then, the medal has been presented almost every
year for scientific or industrial
achievement in any field of pure or applied science. The
association said Johnson is being honored for
"her internationally acknowledged expertise in optics,
optoelectronic switching and display
technology."
With more than 140 published articles, Johnson is
known for pioneering work in "smart pixel
arrays," a field that has applications in displays, pattern
recognition and high-resolution sensors,
including cameras. She holds 129 U.S. and international
patents and patents pending and is a co-
founder of several start-up companies. She also sits on the
boards of directors of Mineral
Technologies, Boston Scientific Corp., AES Corp. and Nortel
Networks.
Throughout her career, Johnson has received a number
of professional honors for her work.
She was named a National Science Foundation Presidential
Young Investigator in 1985 and a Fulbright
Faculty Exchange Scholar in 1991. She subsequently received
the Dennis Gabor Prize for "creativity
and innovation in modern optics," Colorado and North
Carolina Technology Transfer Awards and the
Society of Women Engineers Lifetime Achievement Award. In
2003, she was inducted into the Women
in Technology International Hall of Fame.
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.
Johnson graduated from Stanford University in 1981
with bachelor's and master's degrees in
electrical engineering. She earned her doctorate at
Stanford in 1984. From 1985 to 1999, she was on
the faculty at the University of Colorado, Boulder,
ascending to the rank of professor. From 1993 to
1997, she directed a National Science Foundation
Engineering Research Center for Optoelectronic
Computing Systems, run jointly by Colorado and Colorado
State. From 1999 through 2007, she served
as dean of the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke
University. Under her leadership, the Pratt School
experienced significant growth in both size and quality.
On Sept. 1, 2007, Johnson became the 12th provost at
Johns Hopkins and the first woman to
hold the university's second-ranking position. In addition
to her duties as chief academic officer,
Johnson holds an appointment as a professor in the Whiting
School's Department of
Electrical and Computer Engineering.
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