about
Terry D. Johnson has a master's degree in chemical engineering from MIT and is currently a Senior Instructional Professor of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago. He is an emeritus Teaching Professor of Bioengineering at UC Berkeley. Throughout his career, he has strived to give students the tools that they will need to repair him as he grows old(er).
Terry has taught courses in a wide range of subjects, displaying a versatility that has prevented him from achieving any actual expertise. In 2010 he received the Golden Apple Award for Outstanding Teaching, and was one of the recipients of Berkeley's 2013 Distinguished Teaching Awards. He has helped to invent some stuff related to engineering human tissues and dyeing blue jeans sustainably, and is co-author of the popular science book How to Defeat Your Own Clone. He also has a species of African shrew tick named after him.
When he is not generating PowerPoint slides, he can be found giving talks and panels at events like The Bad Ad Hoc Hypothesis Festival, Nerd Nite, Eureka! Science Comedy, Wondercon, and Silicon Valley Comic-con. A few examples can be found below.
If exhaustive detail is your thing, he also has an academic CV.
A Feast From Crowing
A talk I gave for the Bad Ad Hoc Hypothesis Festival in 2014. It was meant to be wrong, which it is, and funny, which I hope it was.
Lies, Damned Lies, and Academic Narratives
A talk I gave in 2015 for the Thriving in Science lecture series, focused on how we talk about our careers, and how those narratives are deliberately constructed.
Terry Johnson's Last Lecture
What it says on the label! Berkeley, 2022.
UChicago's 77th Annual Latke-Hamantash Debate
A very serious academic tradition.