Scientia Professor Veena Sahajwalla AO is the Director of SMaRT Centre (Sustainable Materials Research & Technology) and Associate Dean (Strategic Industry Relations) faculty of Science, UNSW. Her research interests include sustainability of materials and processes with emphasis on environmental benefits. She invented an environmentally friendly process for recycling plastics and rubber tyres in electric arc furnace steelmaking. She is an international award winning engineer. In 2012 she was named Overall Winner of the Australian Innovation Challenge Award. She was awarded the 2012 Banksia Award, the GE Eco Innovation Award and the 2005 Eureka Prize for Scientific Research. She has established excellent working relationships with national and international organisations. She was an ARC- Future Fellow and a long-serving judge on ABC television’s The New inventors