Donald Sewell Lopez Jr. (born 1952) is the Arthur E. Link Distinguished University Professor of Buddhist and Tibetan Studies at the University of Michigan, in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures. Lopez was born in Washington, D.C. and is the son of U.S. Air Force pilot and Smithsonian Institution official Donald Lopez.

I've known Don Lopez for about twenty years. I began teaching at Duke University in 1988, and Don's wife, Tomoko Masuzawa, who is a theorist in religious studies, was in the Religious Studies Department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, just down the road.

Donald Sewell Lopez Sr. (July 15, 1923 – March 3, 2008) was a United States Army Air Forces and United States Air Force fighter and test pilot and until his death the deputy director of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum . Lopez was born in Brooklyn, New York on July 15, 1923. He showed an interest in aviation at an early age.