David Johnson, PhD
Dr. Johnson received his PhD in Biochemistry from the Institute of Neurology at the University of London. Following the completion of his PhD studies, he was both a Fogarty Visiting Fellow and Visiting Associate at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, where he worked on the role of glycoproteins in brain development and autoimmune disease. He next moved to Children’s Hospital Boston for a brief period before joining Brigham and Women’s Hospital where he established his own laboratory conducting research on multiple sclerosis funded by awards from the NIH and the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, including a NIH Research Career Development Award. He was concurrently Assistant Professor of Neuroscience at Harvard Medical School, and served as Chair of Admissions to the Neuroscience Graduate Program. In 1993, he moved to Northwestern University, where he has been successively Assistant Chair of the Department of Neurobiology and Physiology, Associate Vice President for Research and, currently, Associate Dean for Research Operations at the Feinberg School of Medicine. In this latter position he has three main roles; teaching, compliance and clinical research. For the former, he is a founding member of the faculty of the NUvention Medical Innovation program, a nationally known inter-school program now in its 10th year that creates interdisciplinary teams of NU Law, Business, Engineering and Feinberg students, and over 6 months exposes them to the process of actual medical device development, from clinical needs finding through intellectual property landscaping, prototyping of a solution to the need they have identified, patent filing and incorporation, He also plays a central role in conflict of Interest management at the Medical School, and is vice chair of the Conflict of Interest Committee. Finally, he is a member of the leadership group of the Center for Clinical research at Northwestern, working to expand clinical trial activity.