In selecting her for this award, the SFS faculty specifically recognized Professor Johnson’s outstanding efforts to involve students from the STIA and biology programs in her field work around the world. Because of Professor Johnson’s commitment to mentoring, undergraduates have had the opportunity to join research expeditions to such places as the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica, just across the sound from the U.S. Antarctic Program’s main base at McMurdo Station, for research that may one day help with the search for life on Mars; Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve in Idaho, where underground lava tubes provide important analogs for Martian basalts; and the Atacama Desert in Chile, where the Johnson Biosignature Lab is investigating how microbial life is preserved in sediments in one of the driest deserts in the world.
