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Engineer-educator takes the reins at SUNY

Apr 25, 2017 6:30 am

Rick Karlin is reporting in the Times Union Kristina Johnson became the 13th Chancellor of the State University of New York on Mon., Apr. 24, during a meeting of the Board of Trustees in Albany. Johnson is an engineer and inventor who once served as undersecretary of the U.S. Department of Engineering during the Obama administration. She holds 118 U.S. and international patents and in addition to helping to develop the technology that led to the creation of 3-D glasses used in films like "Avatar," she also invented a camera to detect pre-cancerous cells on a cervical smear. "Kristina Johnson is the right leader to keep SUNY at the top of its game," said outgoing Chancellor Nancy Zimpher. Johnson began her teaching career at the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1985. Since then she served as dean of Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering and as provost of Johns Hopkins University. At SUNY she will oversee a 64-campus system with 463,000 students and a $12 billion budget. Read the full story in the Times Union.