Benny Johnson, Ph.D.

Benny G. Johnson, PhD, holds a bachelor of science in chemistry and mathematics from the University of Kentucky, and received his PhD in theoretical chemistry from Carnegie Mellon University, where he worked with a Nobel laureate. For the past fifteen years, Dr. Johnson has worked in the field of artificial intelligence for education, leading the research and development efforts of the Quantum technology for tutoring and assessment in chemistry, mathematics, accounting, and special education, and the machine learning predictive analytics technology of Acrobatiq, a Carnegie Mellon spin-off recently acquired by VitalSource Technologies. He leads VitalSource's research effort for using artificial intelligence to automatically create learning science-based courseware from textbooks at large scale. Dr. Johnson is the author of over fifty scholarly publications in academic journals and books and has delivered invited lectures at many national and international conferences. As principal investigator on various research and development projects, Dr. Johnson has received funding from the US Department of Education, National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, US Department of Energy, and Air Force Office of Scientific Research. He is a recipient of the Tibbetts Award, the highest recognition given by the federal government to small businesses for innovative research, and in 2007, he was inducted into the University of Kentucky's Alumni Hall of Fame. He enjoys playing music and lifting weights with his son.