Biodesign Directory Profile

Bio

Roger Johnson is a Research Scientist and Laboratory Manager in the Center for Biosignatures Discovery Automation in ASU’s Biodesign Institute.  He joined Dean Deirdre Meldrum’s research team in November, 2006, just prior to her moving to ASU in January, 2007.  Roger is responsible for overall management of daily research activities in the Center, and leads the cell CT research.  CT stands for “computed tomography”, an imaging modality commonly associated with clinical radiology.  Cell CT is a relatively new method for 3D structural and functional imaging of biological cells.  Roger has over twenty years’ experience in 3D micro CT, and is an expert in CT scanner design and construction, image reconstruction algorithms, and 3D image processing and analysis.  Prior to joining ASU, he was a tenured associate professor in Biomedical Engineering at Marquette University in Milwaukee, with appointments at the Medical College of Wisconsin (Departments of Biophysics and Radiology) and the Milwaukee VAMC Department of Physiology, where he built an x-ray microtomograph to study the lung microvasculature in animal models of pulmonary hypertension.  Before moving to Marquette in 1996, he was Assistant Professor in Bioengineering and Radiology at The Ohio State University.  Roger obtained his BA degree in German and chemistry from the University of Connecticut in 1979.  This included a junior year abroad in Salzburg, Austria.  From 1980 through 1987 he worked in the orthopedic implant field, both in industry and the hospital-based research setting.  It was this pursuit that led him to the practice and the study of 3D medical imaging, first with light and electron microscopy, then using other modalities including CT, MRI, and PET.  He returned to school to complete the Ph.D. in Bioengineering at the University of Washington from 1987 to 1995.  For his dissertation research, he designed and built an x-ray microscope and x-ray microtomograph for point-projection data acquisition of biological specimens, concentrating on the guinea pig cochlea.  Roger is co-inventor of the cell CT and has seven patents including two on x-ray and two on optical microtomography.