Profile

Dr. Kara Johnson is an Assistant Professor at the University of Utah in the Departments of Biomedical Engineering and Neurosurgery and Affiliate Faculty of the Scientific Computing & Imaging (SCI) Institute. She earned her BS and PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Utah with fellowship support from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) 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 nonmotor symptoms and 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 and develop novel techniques to titrate DBS to alleviate depression more effectively. Her ultimate goal is to develop multimodal, translational approaches to guide neuromodulation therapies and improve treatments and quality of life for patients with neurological and psychiatric disorders.