John K. Johnstone received a B.Sc. (High Honours) in mathematics from the University of Saskatchewan in 1983, and was awarded the Governor General's Gold Medal for most outstanding undergraduate. He received an M.S. and Ph.D. in computer science from Cornell University in 1987, working under John Hopcroft. His early research was on algebraic curves in geometric modeling, with a Ph.D. thesis entitled `The Sorting of Points along an Algebraic Curve'. He also worked in the CS Robotics Laboratory at Cornell.
He joined the faculty of the Department of Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University in 1987. His research at Johns Hopkins concentrated on the definition and intersection of algebraic curves and surfaces (including ruled surfaces, quadric surfaces, Dupin cyclides, and other swept surfaces), the construction of bisectors, blending surfaces, and quaternion splines. He also did research on biomedical visualization and helped to found the Center for Biomedical Visualization at Johns Hopkins.
Since September 1994, he has been an associate professor of Computer and Information Sciences at UAB. His research at UAB has continued on smooth contour reconstruction, rational quaternion splines, rational swept surfaces, bitangency, shadows, and visibility analysis.