Rate My Professor Bruce Johnson

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.