Christopher (Chris) R. Johnson

Founder of the Scientific Computing and Imaging (SCI) research group, which grew into the Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute (SCI Institute), Johnson has served as a Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at the University of Utah, in Salt Lake City, Utah. His research interests are in the areas of scientific computing and scientific visualization.

Born in Kansas City, Kansas, he received his B.S. degree in Physics in 1982 from Wright State University in Fairborn, Ohio. He received his M.S. degree in Physics in 1984, and his Ph.D. in Biophysics in 1989, both from the University of Utah, in Salt Lake City. From 1985 to 1989, he served as an Assistant Professor of Physics at Westminster College in Salt Lake City, Utah.

In 1990, he joined the University of Utah, first as a Research Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine at the Nora Eccles Harrison Cardiovascular Research and Training Institute (CVRTI), and held faculty positions in the Departments of Mathematics, Bioengineering, Physics, and Computer Science. In 1996, Johnson was appointed Associate Professor and Associate Chairman in the Department of Computer Science. In 2003, he was promoted to the rank of Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at the University of Utah and served as the Director of the School of Computing.

He served as the Director of the ACCESS Program for Women in Science and Mathematics in 1993 and as a member of the ACCESS Faculty from 1993 to 2003. In 1999, he founded and directed the Engineering Scholars Program, presiding until 2004. In 1992, Johnson founded the Scientific Computing and Imaging (SCI) research group at the University of Utah, which grew to become the Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute (SCI Institute), employing over 200 faculty, staff, and students.

Johnson has served on several international journal editorial boards, as well as on advisory boards to several national and international research centers. In 2013, he was elected to the Board of Directors of the Computing Research Association (CRA), and in 2012 he was selected as a member of the Executive Committee of the IEEE Visualization and Graphics Technical Committee.

The recipient of numerous awards, a few of which include: in 1992, the Young Investigator's (FIRST) Award from the NIH; in 1995, President Clinton named him one of 30 top young scientists and engineers nationally to receive the Presidential Faculty Award, each of which carried a $500,000 research grant; in 2010, the Rosenblatt Award from the University of Utah and the IEEE Visualization Career Award; in 2012, the IEEE IPDPS Charles Babbage Award; and in 2013, the IEEE Computer Society Sidney Fernbach Award "For outstanding contributions and pioneering work introducing computing, simulation, and visualization into many areas of biomedicine."

In 2004, he was elected a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, and in 2005 he was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Johnson was elected a Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) and received the Utah Cyber Pioneer Award, both in 2009. In 2014, he was elected an IEEE Fellow in recognition of his leadership in scientific computing and scientific visualization.

With Charles D. Hansen, M. Chen, A.E. Kaufman, and H. Hagen, he was the co-author of "Scientific Visualization: Uncertainty, Multifield, Biomedical, and Scalable Visualization" (2014), Mathematics and Visualization, Springer, ISBN 978-1-4471-6496-8; and "The Visualization Handbook" (2005) with Charles D. Hansen, Elsevier, ISBN 0-12-387582-X. Additional publications include M.G. Genton, R. Potter, P. Kristi, G. Stenchikov, and Y. Sun (2014), "Surface Boxplots" (PDF), Stat Journal 3 (1), pp. 1–11; and F. Jiao, J.M. Phillips, Y. Gur (2013), "Uncertainty Visualization in HARDI based on Ensembles of ODFs" (PDF), Proceedings of 2013 IEEE Pacific Visualization Symposium, pp. 193–200, PMC 3898522, PMID 24466504.