Michael Olsen is the CH2M Hill Professor of Geomatics in the School of Civil and Construction Engineering at Oregon State University. Olsen serves as the Technical Director for the NSF Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) RAPID Facility, the Director of the Cascadia Lifelines Program (CLiP), an Associate Editor of the ASCE Journal of Surveying Engineering, and a co-founder and CEO of a tech transfer spinout company, EZDataMD, LLC. He has also served as the President in Surveying and Geomatics Educators Society (SaGES). He teaches geomatics engineering courses at OSU where he has developed new, ground-breaking courses in 3D laser scanning, Digital Terrain Modeling, and Building Information Modeling.
His research focuses on the collaborative application of geospatial technologies to infrastructure monitoring and management as well as natural hazards. He is a leading researcher in reality capture, point cloud algorithm development, and the integration of sensing technologies with the built environment. His work bridges academia and practice, advancing methods for translating complex 3D reality data into actionable engineering representations.
Example projects he has been involved with include: development of survey and mapping guidelines for transportation agencies; development of advanced point cloud segmentation, classification, registration, and modeling algorithms; infrastructure assessment and monitoring; modeling and studying historical buildings; monitoring, mapping, and characterizing geohazards such as coastal erosion, landslides, and rockfall; and 3D documentation of infrastructure performance through post-earthquake reconnaissance. At CVPR, he has played a key role in creating influential benchmarks and community challenges most notably Scan-to-Drawing competitions that formalize evaluation standards for converting scans into 2D drawings. Through his research, teaching, and leadership in open benchmarks, Michael has helped shape how the vision community tackles real-world problems in construction, infrastructure, and geospatial analytics.