Kara Johnson, PhD

Dr. Kara Johnson is an Assistant Professor at the University of Utah in the Departments of Biomedical Engineering and Neurosurgery and Affiliate Faculty in the Scientific Computing & Imaging (SCI) Institute. She earned her BS and PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Utah with graduate fellowship support from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the SCI Institute. She then pursued postdoctoral training at the University of Florida at the Norman Fixel Institute for Neurological Diseases and the Departments of Neurology and Neurosurgery. Her neural engineering research aims to understand the therapeutic mechanisms of deep brain stimulation (DBS) using intracranial neurophysiology, neuroimaging, and computational modeling. She holds special interest in psychiatry, including Tourette syndrome and mood/anxiety disorders. She was awarded the NIH K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award to investigate multimodal biomarkers of depression in Parkinson’s disease. Her ultimate goal is to develop translational approaches to guide neuromodulation therapies and improve treatments for patients with neurological and psychiatric disorders.