Meet our team
Elizabeth Olson, Ph.D.
Pronouns: She / Her
Title: Vice President, AI/NLP Clinical Research Science
Joined Crisis Text Line: March 2023
Elizabeth Olson, Ph.D. leads a team that leverages a dataset of nearly 11 million de-identified crisis conversations to identify complex aspects of emotional and psychological reactions to crisis moments as they unfold, using machine learning and natural language processing techniques.
With more than 15 years of experience as a clinical psychologist and cognitive neuroscientist, she is passionate about understanding how stress and trauma affect social behavior and mental well-being.
Before joining Crisis Text Line in 2023, Elizabeth was an Assistant Professor in the Center for Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Research at McLean Hospital, where she was the director of the Affective Neuroscience of Trauma and Resilience Lab. Her work has been supported by the National Institute of Mental Health (R01, K23), Brain & Behavior Research Foundation (NARSAD Young Investigator Award), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and American Public Health Association.
Elizabeth received her Ph.D. in Clinical Science & Psychopathology Research from the University of Minnesota and completed postdoctoral fellowships at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center / Harvard Medical School (clinical neuropsychology) and McLean Hospital (clinical neuroscience).
In her role on Crisis Text Line’s Research & Impact team, Elizabeth leads an interdisciplinary team that is uniquely positioned to leverage cutting edge analytic techniques and apply them to topics of high clinical relevance.
