John Ochsendorf is Class of 1942 Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Architecture at MIT.  He is a founding partner of ODB Engineering and is the former director of the American Academy in Rome. He is a structural engineer with multi-disciplinary research interests including the history of construction, masonry mechanics, and sustainable design. He conducts research on the structural safety of historic monuments and the design of more sustainable structures.

He studied structural mechanics at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, USA; Princeton, NJ, USA; and the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom. He is author of Guastavino Vaulting: The Art of Structural Tile (2010). His work has been supported by the Rome Prize, the MacArthur Fellowship, the Fulbright Fellowship, and numerous other international awards.