Lorraine G. (Lori) Olson is an American mechanical engineer whose research involves the application of the finite element method in the engineering design process and in medical diagnosis[1], including detecting breast cancer.
[2] She is a professor of mechanical engineering at the Rose–Hulman Institute of Technology.
Her dissertation, Finite Element Analysis of Fluid-Structure Interactions, was supervised by Klaus-Jürgen Bathe.
[3] She became an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and applied mathematics at the University of Michigan from 1985 to 1990, when she moved to the Illinois Institute of Technology as an associate professor of mathematics.
She has had her present position at the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology since 2002, and served as department head there from 2014 to 2019.