Kristina M. Johnson (born May 7, 1957) is an American business executive, engineer, academic, and former government official who served as the 13th chancellor of the State University of New York from September 2017 until June 2020. In June 2020, the Ohio State University Board of Trustees named her as the university's 16th president, succeeding the retiring Michael V. Drake. She has been a leader in the development of optoelectronic processing systems, 3-D imaging, and color-management systems. Early life and education Johnson was born in St. Louis, Missouri and grew up in Denver, Colorado. As a senior at Thomas Jefferson High School, she won the Denver City and Colorado State science fair competition, and placed second in the Physics division and a first place award from the Air Force at the International Science Fair for her project entitled, "Holographic Study of the Sporangiophore Phycomyces". Johnson grew up in a large, athletic family. She competed in Tae Kwon Do and learned to play lacrosse on the boys' lacrosse team. Her paternal grandfather, Charles W. Johnson, attended the Ohio State University and played football for the Buckeyes in 1896; Johnson would eventually become president there. As an undergraduate at Stanford University, Johnson founded the women's club lacrosse team (now varsity) and played on the field hockey team, trying out for the U.S. Team in 1978. In 1979, Johnson was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease and turned her focus to an academic career. Johnson received her B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford, and was a postdoctoral fellow at Trinity College Dublin. Career After the postdoctoral fellowship, Johnson was appointed assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder in 1985, where she co-founded the National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering Research Center (ERC) for Optoelectronic Computing Systems and spun off several companies from her research laboratory including ColorLink, Inc which was later sold to RealD, responsible for the technology that helped re-launch the 3D movie industry. Additionally, she co-founded the Colorado Advanced Technology Institute Center of Excellence in Optoelectronics. In 1999, Johnson was appointed Dean of the School of Engineering at Duke University, which would be later named for distinguished alumnus, Edmund T. Pratt Jr., CEO emeritus of Pfizer Corporation. In 2007, Johnson became the Senior Vice-President and Provost of Johns Hopkins University. In 2009, Johnson was appointed by President Obama as the Under Secretary of Energy