Laura Mersini-Houghton is an Albanian-American cosmologist and theoretical physicist, and Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 

She is a proponent of the multiverse hypothesis, which holds that our universe is one of many. She argues that anomalies in the current structure of the universe are best explained as the gravitational tug exerted by other universes.

Laura Mersini was born in Tirane, Albania, Europe. She received her BS degree from the University of Tirana, Albania. In 1997, Mersini-Houghton was awarded her M.Sc. by the University of Maryland, and in 2000 completed her PhD at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. From 2000 to 2002, after earning her doctorate, Mersini-Houghton was a postdoctoral fellow at the Italian Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. From 2002 to 2003, Mersini-Houghton had a postdoctoral fellowship at Syracuse University.

In January 2004, Mersini-Houghton accepted a position as assistant professor of theoretical physics and cosmology at University of North Carolina. She was granted tenure in 2008 and was later promoted to full professor.