Johnson is a professor of Astronomy at the University of Virginia, where she is also affiliated faculty in the Religious Studies Department, Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education, and founder of the award-winning Dark Skies Bright Kids program. She is the past-president of both the American Astronomical Society and Astronomical Society of the Pacific. She earned her BA in physics from Carleton College, and her MS and PhD in astrophysics from the University of Colorado. She has won numerous awards for her research, teaching, and promotion of science literacy. Her TED talk on the importance of dark skies has more than 2 million views, she has been a guest on NPR’s Science Friday, and her writing has appeared in nationwide publications, including the New York Times, Scientific American, and Washington Post. Her children’s book Constellations for Kids is consistently in the top 10 children’s astronomy books, and her latest book, Into the Unknown: the Quest to Understand the Mysteries of the Cosmos, was listed as a top-20 non-fiction book for 2024 by Publisher’s Weekly.
