Mark Johnson

Mark Johnson’s career encompasses over 25 years of leadership experience in the management, engineering, and operations of Internet technologies. He is currently the Chief Technology Officer and Vice President for Data Architecture at MCNC.

During Johnson’s tenure at MCNC, he has overseen the transformation of the North Carolina Research and Education Network (NCREN) from a simple series of point-to-point links to a sophisticated network of gigabit class connections, optical rings, and regional points of presence. During that same time period, he has managed a 1000 fold increase in Internet usage. Johnson also has led MCNC’s regional and national networking activities as a founding member of the North Carolina Networking Initiative. In addition, Mark has been involved in Internet2 since its inception, serving in a variety of member leadership positions. He is a past Chair of The Quilt, a national consortium of regional research and education network operators. From 2011-2012 Mark served as the Interim Executive Director for the US UCAN project intended to help connect the 200,000 U.S. community anchor institutions like public libraries, schools, community colleges, research parks, public safety and health care institutions across the country to next-generation Internet-based applications.

Mark also led a local team that developed the initial concept for the NLR Experiments Support Center and won the competition for that service. He also led the local team who combined with Indiana University and the MAX GigaPoP to create the Internet2 Hybrid Optical and Packet Infrastructure (HOPI) support center.