Laura Atkinson Schaefer is an American mechanical engineer whose research concerns the computational modeling of heat and fluid flow, with applications focusing on energy systems including the heat and energy management of buildings and the design of fuel cells.
[1] Schaefer graduated from Rice University in 1995, with a double major in English and mechanical engineering.
She went to Georgia Tech for graduate study in mechanical engineering, minoring in operations research, under the supervision of Samuel V. Shelton.
She earned a master's degree in 1997 and completed her Ph.D. in 2000; her doctoral dissertation was Single Pressure Absorption Heat Pump Analysis.
In 2015 she returned to Rice University, taking her present position as Burton J. and Ann McMurtry Chair and Professor of Mechanical Engineering and as chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering.