On September 5, 2017, Dr. Johnson will become the 13th Chancellor of the State University of New York, the largest higher education system in the United States. Prior to co-founding Cube Hydro Partners, LLC, Dr. Johnson served as Under Secretary of Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy. As Under Secretary, she was responsible for unifying and managing a broad $10.5 billion Energy and Environment portfolio, including an additional $37 billion in energy and environment investments from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009.
Previously, she was Provost and Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs at The Johns Hopkins University from 2007 to 2009, Dean of the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University from 1999 to 2007 and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Colorado at Boulder from 1985 to 1999.
A Fulbright Faculty Scholar in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland and a NATO Post-Doctoral Fellow at Trinity College, Dublin, Dr. Johnson received her B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University and has honorary degrees from Trinity College, Dublin, Tufts University, McGill University, the University of Alabama at Huntsville and the National University of Ireland, Galway. She is a fellow of the OSA, IEEE, SPIE, AAAS and recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Women Engineers. She was awarded the Dennis Gabor Award for Creativity in Modern Optics, the John Fritz Medal, considered the highest award given in the engineering profession, and has been inducted into the US Inventors Hall of Fame, the National Academy of Inventors, the Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame, the Women in Information Technology Hall of Fame, the Small Business Technology Council Hall of Fame (2010) and the National Academy of Engineering (2016). She holds 118 U.S and International patents and has published 147 refereed publications.
Dr. Johnson is a past trustee of Rocky Mountain Institute and serves on the Board of Directors of AES Corporation, Cisco Systems, and the National Hydropower Association.
