Executive Appointment to CSO: An Expert Interview with Eric Otto Johnson

RTI’s President and CEO Tim J. Gabel recently announced three new executive appointments to key strategic leadership roles effective Oct. 1, 2025. As part of this announcement, Eric Otto Johnson, Ph.D. was appointed as chief science officer (CSO). In his new role, Johnson will provide strategic scientific leadership across RTI, guiding institutional priorities and advancing research excellence, while continuing to represent the institute as a Distinguished Fellow.  

Johnson joined RTI in 2006 and brings extensive experience in building multidisciplinary teams, mentoring emerging scientists and translating research into practical solutions. His RTI career spans more than two decades of groundbreaking research in behavioral health, addiction and HIV. Authoring more than 170 peer-reviewed publications and leading 14 large-scale, National Institutes of Health studies, his work exemplifies the power of science to improve lives. He earned postdoctoral fellowships in epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University and in genetics at the National Institute on Drug Abuse. He received his doctorate and master's degrees in sociology from Western Michigan University and his bachelor's in sociology and psychology from Olivet Nazarene University.  

What inspired your focus on behavioral health and addiction research? 

Substance use disorders take a tremendous toll on humanity and our ability to successfully treat them is limited. Conducting basic research on the epidemiology and genomic factors underlying these diseases holds the promise of identifying key risk factors and targets for treatment development. It is exciting and impactful to be doing science that drives development of interventions and medication assisted treatment for such important human challenges. 

You’ve led numerous large-scale health studies. What’s one that stands out? 

In some ways, the most exciting studies are the ones that you’re currently doing. For me, my primary research focus is on leading the Integrative Omics Center for Accelerating Neurobiological Understanding of Opioid Addiction, which has the overarching goal to identify actionable biological drivers of opioid addiction by conducting large-scale multi-omics studies of opioid addiction in humans and integrating them with mechanistic studies using in vivo studies. The center includes four projects and two cores working collaboratively across multiple institutions, including Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, University of California San Diego, MIT, Johns Hopkins University, the Jackson Laboratory, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Working collaboratively with renowned scientists from across the country allows our team to leverage the agnostic discovery power of omics and place it within the context of functional neurobiology to make field-changing breakthroughs and identify actionable targets for medication development. 

How do your responsibilities as Chief Science Officer support RTI’s mission? 

Science and its application to address humanity’s problems is foundational to RTI’s mission, and what we do day in and day out with our clients, be they public sector or commercial. The role of CSO provides visionary scientific leadership and strategic counsel on key institutional priorities, ensuring that scientific advisement and championing institutional research excellence affects RTI strategy at the highest levels of the institute. The role will be part of what keeps us centered on our mission: discovering new knowledge and turning that knowledge into practice.  

How do you translate scientific research into practical solutions for everyday folks? 

Our efforts to translate my research into practical solutions currently focus on drug repurposing. Through funding from the Department of Defense and the National Institute on Drug Abuse, we have developed and are deploying RTI RealOmics. This integrative bioinformatics tool links genes that play a role in particular diseases with the vast array of FDA approved drugs to identify and prioritize candidates for repurposing to novel disease treatment. Drug repurposing can greatly shorten the time to clinical use of a new treatment and treatments that target gene functions associated with diseases are two to three times more likely to be successful in clinical trials. So, we look to be more effective and faster in bringing new treatments to where they are most needed.  

How do you mentor emerging scientists and what advice do you have for them? 

As an RTI Fellow, a core mission is to mentor the next generation of scientific leaders. That mentorship takes many forms. One example is the First-time First Authors working groups that Bill Zule (retired RTI Senior Fellow) and I began several years back. We meet monthly with early career scientists over the course of a year to provide insights on the process of publishing, working with co-authors, selecting journals, and the many components of moving from a completed research study to peer-reviewed publication. That effort has blossomed into an ongoing series supported by a broad set of RTI Fellows and become an annual award for first-time first authors at the RTI Fellow Author Awards. 

My advice begins with encouragement; you can do amazing things that impact the world. Identify open areas of research that are in alignment with your interests and the interests of research funders, rather than competing in the most crowded domains. Bring innovative methods to address your questions. Build relationships with senior scientists who can mentor you to refine your ideas and strategy for a sustainable portfolio of work. Finally, stay curious, be resilient, and collaborate well. Modern science is a team sport and often multidisciplinary. While challenging, this is one of the most interesting and most rewarding careers one can have: keep the joys of discovery and impact in it. 

Read the full series of interviews with RTI's senior executives.