[1] In 1971 Johannsen started his academic career as division head at the Research Institute for Human Engineering (FGAN-FAT) in Wachtberg, south of Bonn.
After his habilitation in 1980 he became privatdozent in the field of human-machine systems at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at RWTH Aachen University.
[1] Johannsen was a fellow of the International Federation of Automatic Control, where in 1981 he founded the Working Group on Man-Machine Systems, and served in different positions over the years.
[1] In 1986, Jim Alty's HCI group at The Turing Institute won a major European Strategic Program on Research in Information Technology 1 contract to investigate the use of Knowledge Based systems in Process Control Interfaces called GRADIENT (Graphical Intelligent Dialogues, P600).
[5] Johannsen author and co-author of numerous publications in the field of human-machine systems and control theory.