e-Edition
Sign up for email newsletters
Sign up for email newsletters
e-Edition
Trending:
President Joe Biden awarded former University of Colorado Boulder professor Kristina Johnson with the National Medal of Technology and Innovation on Friday.
Johnson is an engineer, educator and entrepreneur who grew up in Denver. She’s an expert in electro-optics, liquid crystal display technology and energy.
Johnson’s research has led to 46 U.S. patents. Her optics inventions have enabled HDTV and modern 3D movies, which have been used in 25,000 theaters around the world and viewed by hundreds of millions of people. Her liquid crystal on silicon displays have been used in advanced cancer prescreening, including identifying masses in mammograms and cancerous cells in pap smears. Her work with liquid crystal on silicon also has applications in 5G and 6G telecommunications and quantum information processing.
Johnson was among eight other recipients of the medal, the nation’s highest honor for exemplary achievement and leadership in science and technology.
“It’s an incredible honor, and I’m just very grateful for my really formative years in Colorado, in Denver and the University of Colorado,” Johnson said. “I have a lot of gratitude for the faculty and my terrific students.”
Johnson began her career as an electrical and computer engineering professor at CU Boulder from 1985 to 1999. She was a founder and director of the National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center for Optoelectronics Computing Systems in Boulder. During her time at CU Boulder, Johnson was nominated for a regional Emmy award for her production of “The Physics of Light,” a 10-part educational television series and curriculum for fifth to eighth graders in the Rocky Mountain Region.
She helped build the optics innovation ecosystem that thrives in Boulder today, one that integrates education, technological breakthroughs, government support and industry collaborations. Johnson has co-founded several companies that apply technology pioneered at the universities where she taught and researched, including CU Boulder.
Johnson said everything started for her at her roots in Denver.
“I participated in the science fair programs as a high school kid in the Denver public schools and that’s really how I got my start in doing research,” she said.
When she arrived at CU Boulder, she got to work alongside the professor who loaned her the equipment for her high school science project. It was surreal and very cool, she said. As a young assistant professor, she learned how to become a great researcher from her mentors at CU Boulder.
“I really felt like it was my university,” Johnson said. “I grew up there, I went to summer school there and I got to teach there. It was fabulous.”
Johnson earned her bachelor’s degree, master’s degree and doctoral degree from Stanford University. She’s been inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame and the Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame.
She was the chief executive officer of Cube Hydro Partners, LLC, a clean energy company and a joint venture between Enduring Hydro, a company she founded, and I Squared Capital, a private equity firm. Johnson also served as Under Secretary of Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy during the Obama administration.
Johnson sold Cube Hydro Partners in 2019 for $1.1 billion and returned to higher education. She was the president of Ohio State University from 2020 to 2023 and the chancellor of the State University of New York starting in 2017. Now, she’s looking to return to the private sector and invest in clean energy companies to reduce the carbon footprint.
Copyright © 2025 MediaNews Group
