John Ochsendorf is a structural engineer and architectural historian who works to preserve historic structures and to reinterpret ancient technologies for contemporary use. Ochsendorf has studied a variety of alternative engineering traditions, including hand-woven, fiber suspension bridges of the Inca Empire. He has also investigated suspension and cable-stayed bridges in Japan. More recently, Ochsendorf has explored the structural safety of such historic monuments as French and Spanish Romanesque churches.

Ochsendorf received a B.Sc. (1996) from Cornell University, an M.Sc. (1998) from Princeton University, and a Ph.D. (2002) from Cambridge University. He received the National Endowment for the Arts Rome Prize for 2007-2008, and was a Fulbright Scholar at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura, Madrid, Spain.