Joy Johnson received her B.S. in Computer Engineering and Electrical Engineering from North Carolina State University in 2007. She is currently working in the MIT Microsystems Technology Lab modeling wafer level uniformity in electrochemical mechanical polishing. She has served as a research intern at the National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network, at Cornell's Nanoscale Facility; worked as a technical intern in the Flash Memory Group for the Intel Corporation; and as a technical intern for IBM.

She is an instructor for MIT's SEED Academy, where she created the syllabus, lectures and lab activities for an electronics course for underrepresented high school seniors. Johnson's honors include an NSF Fellowship, MIT Presidential Fellowship and INTEL GEM Ph.D. Fellowship.