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Kristina Johnson confirmed as U.S. Under Secretary of Energy 21 May 2009Nomination of Kristina Johnson, SPIE Fellow and Provost of Johns Hopkins Univ., as Under Secretary of Energy was unanimously confirmed Tuesday. The post is responsible for leading administration initiatives in energy efficiency, solar and wind power, geothermal energy, clean car technology, and other forms of renewable energy. "The Department has set aggressive goals for creating green jobs, addressing our climate crisis and putting the country on a path to energy independence, and these confirmations are an important step toward reaching those goals," said Secretary of Energy Steven Chu in announcing the Senate's confirmation of Johnson's and other nominations this week. Johnson has been the chief academic officer at Johns Hopkins since 2007, and has served on the Board of Directors of SPIE as well as several SPIE governance committees. She holds 129 U.S. and foreign patents and is the co-founder of several start-up companies. As dean of Duke Univ.'s Pratt School of Engineering from 1999 to 2007, Johnson helped set up interdisciplinary efforts in photonics, bioengineering and biologically inspired materials, and energy and the environment. Johnson has served on several SPIE conference committees, including the upcoming conference on Applications of Digital Image Processing to be held at SPIE Optics and Photonics in August, and authored more than 30 papers for SPIE. |
