A Rising Star – Professor Reva Johnson Honored by Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network

Reva Johnson ’09, Ph.D., associate professor of mechanical engineering and bioengineering, was named a 2021 National Rising Star by the Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network (KEEN).
Professor Johnson returned to her alma mater in 2015 to help shape the College of Engineering’s bioengineering program and has embraced the opportunity to teach and do research in topics she loves. She has also involved several students with her research in the design of haptic devices that communicate touch feedback to the user by applying forces or vibrations. Such a device could be used to enable a person with a prosthetic arm to interact with it and accomplish tasks more precisely and accurately.
She has also worked with students on a rehabilitative video game to make physical therapy more enjoyable and has collaborated with the women’s soccer team on a heart rate project to optimize training activities. Her research is often found at the intersection of bioengineering and mechanical engineering, and it involves human-machine interfaces and human learning, both movement learning and athletic performance.
The Rising Star award recognizes faculty members with fewer than 10 years of teaching experience who equip undergraduate engineers to create personal, economic, and societal value through an entrepreneurial mindset.
As part of the award, Professor Johnson will receive a $10,000 grant to advance KEEN’s mission to make entrepreneurially minded learning commonplace in engineering education. She plans to develop a class that combines creative writing with technical writing and can serve engineering students as well as those from other programs.
“This grant is unique because it gives me the freedom to develop programs that will be most helpful to Valpo students as whole people, not just tied to engineering or research outcomes,” Professor Johnson says. “It provides me the opportunity to work with colleagues across campus to make a meaningful difference in students’ lives.”
Professor Johnson’s nomination for the award centered around the three Cs she focuses on in the classroom: curiosity, connections, and creating value. She says it’s important to have fun while teaching and learning and to relate to people’s lives with tangible examples of engineering principles.