My curriculum vita (PDF) (July 2021).
Detailed Biography:
Carolyn Johnston, Ph.D., is originally from the Syracuse, New York area. She holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Mathematics from Binghamton University, a Ph.D in Mathematics from Louisiana State University, and a Master’s degree in Applied Statistics from Colorado State University.
Following graduate work in mathematics, she was a professor of mathematics for five years at Rutgers University and Florida Atlantic University. During this period, she won a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation for original research in mathematics, and for her proposed plan for educating young mathematicians to be strong contributors in the technology industry.
In 1995, Dr. Johnston left academics to pursue a career in industry in Boulder County, Colorado and in Redmond, Washington. She has spent the last 25 years working as a scientist, manager, and director in Research & Development at geospatial technology companies including Vexcel Corporation, Microsoft, DigitalGlobe, and HERE Technologies. She has been involved in mapping subsidence, elevation, and other map features from synthetic aperture radar data; in the development of original text and image processing algorithms for Bing Local Search; in the development of image adjustment and feature extraction algorithms from satellite imagery; and in automated highly accurate HD mapping for autonomous vehicle localization and path planning applications.
She has extensive experience in developing and writing proposals for both academic and industry opportunities. While a mathematics professor, she was the author of two winning NSF proposals, including the CAREER grant. While at Vexcel Corporation, she was the developer, author, and principal investigator on numerous winning grant applications, mostly for Phase 1 and Phase 2 SBIR opportunities with NASA and the Department of Defense. She is the author of twelve peer-reviewed papers on mathematics and engineering, and the holder of 8 awarded and 10 pending patents from Microsoft, DigitalGlobe, and HERE Technologies.
Most recently, Dr. Johnston was the engineering director of the HERE Technologies team working on the development and maintenance of HD maps for autonomous driving applications. While in this role, she opened HERE’s Boulder office, and built a team of engineers working on production algorithm development and engineering proofs of concept for automotive OEMs, including Daimler and Audi.
Dr Johnston left HERE Technologies in November 2019 to found a consulting firm, Johnston Consulting Services, LLC, specializing in geospatial data science. In 2020, Dr Johnston completed a Masters in Applied Statistics from Colorado State University.
Johnston Consulting Services, LLC 