Bruce Johnson serves as Adjunct Research Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Rice University. He earned his Ph.D. in Chemistry in 1981 from the University of Wisconsin, studying under theoretical chemist Joseph Hirschfelder. Johnson then held postdoctoral fellowships in theoretical chemistry with William Reinhardt at the University of Colorado and the University of Pennsylvania, focusing on large-amplitude molecular vibrations, and in the experimental group of James Kinsey at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, examining Raman spectroscopy of photodissociating molecules. In 1988, he moved to Rice University as a Senior Research Scientist with Kinsey and advanced through faculty roles: Faculty Fellow in Chemistry in 1994, Senior Faculty Fellow in 2000, and Distinguished Faculty Fellow in 2004, renamed Research Professor in 2017. An early collaborator in the Laboratory for Nanophotonics, he was appointed Executive Director of the Rice Quantum Institute in 2000 by Peter Nordlander, guiding its growth to 65 faculty members across the Schools of Natural Sciences and Engineering. He contributed to expanding the interdisciplinary Applied Physics Ph.D. Program fivefold and directed the institute's Research Experiences for Undergraduates program.

From 2010 to 2014, Johnson worked in the National Science Foundation's Division of Chemistry, managing the Chemical Theory, Models and Computational Methods and Macromolecular, Supramolecular and Nanochemistry programs, including proposal reviews and awards. He returned to Rice University at the end of 2014 to pursue theoretical research. His research specializations in Chemistry include multiscale computations, theoretical chemistry, surface-enhanced spectroscopies such as Raman scattering (SERS), fluorescence (SEF), and Raman optical activity (SEROA), nanochemistry, and chemical theory. Ongoing work features wavelet basis improvements for local fields around plasmonic nanoparticles, dimerization reactions of ligands on plasmonic nanoparticles, and electromagnetic simulations of forces in Teslaphoresis, forming conducting chains of single-walled carbon nanotubes using RF electric fields from a Tesla coil.

Professional Email: johnson@rice.edu