Michelle D. Johannes is an American volleyball player and physicist. She was a star player on the volleyball team forMount Holyoke College in the early 1990s, and then became a research physicist for theUnited States Naval Research Laboratory, where her research concerns theoretical and computationalcondensed matter physics including the physics ofsuperconductors andelectric batteries.
Johannes was a student athlete atMount Holyoke College, playing volleyball in the New England Women's 8 Conference, a precursor to theNew England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference. She was named by theCollege Sports Information Directors of America to theAcademic All-America teams in 1990, 1991, and 1992, and was the 1992 New England Women's 8 Conference player of the year.[1] After graduating from Mount Holyoke in 1993, Johannes spent a year as a volleyball coach before turning to her later career in physics.[2]
Johannes was named to the Mount Holyoke Athletics Hall of Fame in 2017.[2] In 2020 she was named to the Academic All-America Hall of Fame.[1] She became the first Hall of Fame inductee from Mount Holyoke and from theSeven Sisters.[3]
As a student at Mount Holyoke, Johannes majored in physics, with a minor in French.[2] She graduatedmagna cum laude andPhi Beta Kappa in 1993,[1] and returned to physics a year later as a laboratory instructor in physics at Mount Holyoke.[2] In 1997 she turned to graduate study in physics at theUniversity of California, Davis,[2] earning a master's degree in 1999 and completing her Ph.D. in 2003,[1] advised by Warren Pickett.[4] Her doctoral dissertation wasComputational Investigation of Magnetic Interactions: Combining First Principles and Model Approaches.[5]
Pickett had previously worked for theUnited States Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), and at his suggestion she came to NRL as a postdoctoral researcher in 2003, supported by a fellowship from theNational Research Council. She obtained a permanent position at the laboratory in 2005, and was named as Section Head for the Theory of Advanced Functional Materials Section in the Material Science & Technology Division in 2015.[4]
At NRL, Johannes's early work concerned the interactions betweensuperconductivity andmagnetism, and the mechanisms by whichiron-based superconductors work,[6] focusing on the roles played byFermi surface nesting andcharge density waves in this behavior.[7] Later, her interests shifted to thematerials science underlyinglithium-ion batteries, the diffusion of Lithium ions into the battery during its operation, and more generally the study ofelectrodes at thenanoscale.[6]
Johannes was named as a 2011Sigma Xi Young Investigator. She was elected as a 2012Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS),[6] after a nomination from the APS Division of Computational Physics, "for computational work that has made a strong impact in novel superconductivity, magnetism, charge density waves and battery electrode materials. Her calculations have contributed to understanding and explaining the underlying physics that governs the properties of widely diverse materials."[8]
