Johann is French and was born in Savoie region, on the border between France and Switzerland. He was educated in France and graduated an Ingénieur Diploma in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering from ESCPE-Lyon (France) and the same year a Master degree in Organic Chemistry from the University of Lyon (France). With the financial support of EU (FP7), he stayed in Lyon for his PhD and joined the group of Dr. Philippe Belmont (CNRS and University of Lyon). His work focused on the synthesis of acridine derivatives displaying potential anticancer properties as effective and selective inhibitors of the cyclin dependent kinase activity. He was next appointed by ARC (French Cancer research Association) to continue this work as post-doc.

He then switched topic and moved to the University of St Andrews (Scotland) to join the group of Prof. Steve Nolan, working on organometallic chemistry. In particular, Johann developed catalytic systems based on NHC-ruthenium complexes and chemistry based on NHC-gold catalysis

Next, he joined the University of Geneva (Switzerland) as a post-doc in the group of Prof. Jérôme Lacour and, after three years, he was promoted to Maître Assistant (Lecturer) in the same group. His work on new stable carbocations, and cationic helicenes in particular, focused on the properties of this intriguing derivatives in synthesis, chirality, spectroscopic studies and bio-applications.