Sinead O'Sullivan, who is originally from Northern Ireland, graduated in aerospace engineering from Queen's University in 2011. She is a research fellow at the Center for Climate and Security, where she looks at space technologies and their role in monitoring climate change and climate-related risks. O'Sullivan is currently at the Harvard Business School, where her research focuses on the commercialisation of space technologies. She has previously worked as an aerospace engineer at the Georgia Institute of Technology's Aerospace Systems Design Laboratory, where she researched and developed space technologies for NASA and the US Navy - along with teams of international innovators, she was working on "advanced concepts", radical new ideas for future space missions. She is currently a lead for the Space Generation Advisory Council's space technologies for disaster management research group, a Sainsbury management fellow for the Royal Academy of Engineering and an entrepreneurship fellow at the Harvard Business School. Callaghan Innovation has brought O'Sullivan to NZ for Tauranga's inaugural innovation festival, Groundswell, where she is judging the Young Innovator Awards.