John Howard obtained his PhD degree in 1983 in the field of plasma physics at the University of Sydney. He subsequently worked in the Dept of Electrical Engineering at UCLA until his return to The Australian National University in 1989. Prof Howard has worked on many aspects relating to the diagnosis and physics of plasmas in the H-1 heliac. He also has interests in the broad area of remote sensing and inverse methods with strong links into industry and medical imaging. He has been head of the toroidal plasma physics group since 2009.

Professor Howard is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics. He has served on a number of international review and/or conference committees and editorial boards, and has organised the very successful biannual Japan-Australia Plasma diagnostics workshop series since 2002. He has won more than $2.5M in research grants since 2005 and has approximately 90 papers in peer reviewed journals. Professor Howard has supervised or advised 20 PhD or MPhil students and 10 honours students.