Michael Johnston

Michael Johnston
Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer
Director, Neuroscience Laboratory
Kennedy Krieger Institute &
Attending Physician
Hopkins Children’s and Kennedy Krieger
Professor, Neurology, Pediatrics and Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation
Johns Hokins University and Kennedy Kreieger Institute

Dr. Johnston is a pediatric neurologist who graduated from the University Of Pittsburgh School Of Medicine in 1971 and then came to Baltimore and trained in pediatrics, clinical pharmacology and pediatric neurology at Johns Hopkins. During his neurology residency he spent two years working in Joseph Coyle’s laboratory at Hopkins doing research on the effects of brain injury on neurotransmitters systems. After completing his residency training he was appointed as an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics and Neurology at the University of Michigan Medical Center in Ann Arbor where he practiced pediatric neurology and started a laboratory to continue his research. His laboratory was among the first to recognize the important role of the neurotransmitter glutamate to cause brain injury from hypoxia, stroke and trauma in infants and children, and the potential to design therapies to protect the brain and salvage brain tissue (neuroprotection). After eight years at Michigan he returned to Baltimore to become the Chief Medical Officer and Director of the Neuroscience Laboratory at Kennedy Krieger Institute and Professor of Neurology, Pediatrics and Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Johns Hopkins Children's Center. At Kennedy Krieger Institute, he holds the Blum/Moser Chair for Pediatric Neurology.

Dr. Johnston is an attending physician in pediatric neurology at the Kennedy Krieger Children’s Hospital and the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center. He has a special interest in the neurological care of children with critical illnesses in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) and the Neuro-Intensive Care Nursery (NICN) at Hopkins Children’s and the follow-up care and rehabilitation of these children at Kennedy Krieger. His laboratory is funded by the National Institutes of Health to perform fundamental studies on the mechanisms for of brain injury, plasticity and neuroprotection, including a project on the use of low temperatures (hypothermia) to protect the brain during cardiac surgery with Dr. William Baumgartner at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He has also been a co-investigator on clinical trials to protect the brain from injury, including girls with Rett syndrome at Kennedy Krieger (Dr. Sakku Naidu, Principal Investigator) and children with traumatic brain injury in the PICU (Dr. Hal Shaffner, Principal Investigator).