| Professor David C. Johnson, a chemistry faculty member at the University of Oregon and UO’s Materials Science Institute, is one of the winners of the 2006 Outstanding Scientist Award from the Oregon Academy of Science (OAS). This award was presented to Professor Johnson in recognition of his commitment to bring innovative programs to the forefront of graduate research and education.
Johnson has been an active member of the research community in Oregon for the past 20 years. He began his career at the UO in 1986 and is currently a faculty co-director of ONAMI.
Johnson’s research efforts focused on the principle of controlling solid state reactions by tailoring diffusion distances, which has resulted in a new synthetic technique that has permitted Johnson and his coworkers to prepare hundreds of new inorganic materials. This synthetic control is being used to understand the interplay between structure and properties in this class of materials.
Johnson is devoted to improving science education at all levels. He led the development of the Materials Science Institute’s graduate internship program that has put the UO chemistry department consistently among the top 10 in the country for awarding masters degrees. He has been the lead PI for MSI’s NSF funded IGERT (Integrated Graduate Education and Research Training) program that has received national attention for its innovations in graduate education. More recently he has partnered with Professors Tyler, Page, and Livelybrooks in starting an NSF GK–12 program, which places graduate students in K–12 classrooms in schools in Lane, Deschutes, and Jefferson counties, where they educate teachers to teach science using an active learning science kit curriculum.
|
