| Sarah Stewart Johnson | |
| Birth Place: | Kentucky |
| Nationality: | American |
| Alma Mater: | Washington University in St. Louis Oxford University Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Work Institutions: | Georgetown University Harvard University |
| Doctoral Advisor: | Maria Zuber |
| Thesis Title: | Mars in the late Noachian : evolution of a habitable surface environment |
| Thesis Year: | 2008 |
| Thesis Url: | https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/45605 |
Sarah Stewart Johnson is an American biologist, geochemist, astronomer and planetary scientist. She joined Georgetown University in 2014[1] and is currently the Provost's Distinguished Associate Professor of Biology and the Science, Technology, and International Affairs program in the School of Foreign Service.[2]
Johnson was born in Kentucky and grew up in Lexington.[3] She received her bachelor's degree from Washington University in St. Louis, where she was an Arthur Holly Compton Fellow and majored in math and environmental studies. During college, she won a Goldwater Scholarship and a Truman Scholarship.[3] [4] [5] Johnson then attended Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar where she earned bachelor's and master's degrees.[6] In 2008, she completed a PhD in planetary science at MIT.[7]
Johnson was a Junior Fellow at Harvard University from 2008-2009 and 2011-2013.[8] She was a White House Fellow working for the President’s Science Advisor, under the Obama administration from 2009-2011. Johnson became a faculty member at Georgetown in 2014. Her work involves the use of analog environments to study the habitability of the surface and subsurface of Mars and icy moons.[9] [10] Her lab at Georgetown is currently focused on the detection of agnostic biosignatures, sometimes referred to as "life as we don't know it".[11] [12] She is a visiting scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center with the Planetary Environments lab.[13] She participated in the Curiosity, Opportunity, and Spirit missions.[6] [3]