Kari Johnson, Ph.D.

Dr. Kari Johnson is a Program Director at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. Her portfolio includes BRAIN Connectivity across Scales (CONNECTS) projects that are aimed at large-scale mapping of local and long-range neural connectivity. Prior to joining NINDS in 2023, Kari was on the faculty of Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (Bethesda, MD), where her lab studied basal ganglia circuits involved in reinforcement learning and behavioral flexibility. She received her PhD in Pharmacology at Vanderbilt University and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.