Lorin Swint Matthews is an American astrophysicist whose research concerns dusty plasma, its role in planet formation, the structures formed within it in computational simulation and laboratory experiments, and the design of shielding to protect spacecraft from it.
[1] Matthews is originally from Paris, Texas,[1] one of six children of biochemist Susan Brown Swint and her husband, dermatologist Richard B.
[2] She was a student of physics at Baylor University, earning a bachelor's degree there in 1994 and completing her Ph.D. in 1998.
[1] After two years as an engineer in the aerospace industry, she returned to Baylor as a lecturer.
[3] Matthews was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) in 2023, after a nomination from the APS Division of Plasma Physics, "for pioneering contributions to the fundamental understanding of dust charging and dynamics in a plasma environment through numerical studies".