User:Ktmj55

Kevin Todd Michael Johnson is an oceanographer, volcanologist, and geologist at the University of Hawai‘i and a Program Director in the Ocean Sciences Division of the National Science Foundation. He is married to Dr. Laura Kong and has two daughters, Claire Noelani (born 1997), and Celia Hokulani (born 2002). He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Geological Sciences from The Pennsylvania State University (1977), a Master of Science degree in Marine Geology and Geophysics from University of Hawai‘i (1983), and a Doctor of Philosophy degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (1990). He was born May 7, 1955 in Kansas City, Missouri and is the son of Thomas Folsom Johnson and Eunice Wilson Johnson (deceased 2000). The family moved to Trevose, Pennsylvania in 1956, and to Yardley, Pennsylvania in 1961. Kevin graduated from Pennsbury High School in Fairless Hills, Pennsylvania in 1973.

Following his undergraduate studies at Penn State, Kevin joined the U.S. Peace Corps and went to Western Samoa as a hydrologist, where he was responsible for designing and testing a facility for the country's first water treatment facility. Following the Peace Corps, Kevin worked for the U.S. Geological Survey's Water Resource Division in Anchorage, Alaska before enrolling at the University of Hawaii in 1981. He studied under Professor John M. Sinton and his thesis research was on the hotspot volcanoes related to the Samoan Volcanic Chain. Following his M.S. degree in 1983, he went to study volcanoes in Japan with Professor Yoshio Katsui at Hokkaido University, where he studied Rausu Volcano and Shiretoko Peninsula volcanic hazards as well as sailing to the Ogasawara Islands and Marianas with the Ocean Research Institute of the University of Tokyo with Professor Kazuo Kobayashi and published several scientific papers on his studies. After finishing his research in Hokkaido in 1985, he entered the MIT/Woods Hole Joint Program in Oceanography for his Ph.D. studies, working under Dr. Henry Dick, Professor Frederick Frey, and Dr. Nobumichi Shimizu on mantle melting processes deduced from the geochemistry of oceanic peridotites, a type of mantle rock. It was at MIT that he met his future wife, Laura Kong, a seismology student in the Joint Program. After completing his Ph.D in 1990, he was awarded an NSF/Japan Society for the Promotion of Science post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Tokyo with Professor Ikuo Kushiro doing experimental studies of partitioning of elements in mineral phases at high pressures.

Following his post-doctoral studies in Japan, Kevin and Laura returned to Laura's home in Hawaii, where they both took positions, Kevin as the geologist at Bishop Museum in Honolulu, and Laura as geophysicist at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. Kevin moved to the University of Hawaii in 2004 as a research professor.