Dr Marguerite Nyhan - Project Lead

Dr. Marguerite Nyhan leads the Sustainable Futures project. Dr. Nyhan is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Environmental Engineering & Future Sustainability in the School of Engineering & Architecture at University College Cork and a Visiting Scientist at Harvard University in Boston. Marguerite is also a Principal Investigator at the Environmental Research Institute and at the MaREI Centre for Climate, Energy and Marine. Since joining UCC in 2019, Marguerite has won 5.1 million euro in funding as lead Principal Investigator.  

In leading Sustainable Futures, Dr. Nyhan founded the Sustainable Futures Lab and directs a number of university-wide and inter-institutional postgraduate programmes in sustainability, including the MSc and HDip in Sustainability in Enterprise. Marguerite lectures in environmental engineering, data analytics and in systems thinking in sustainability.  

Dr. Nyhan also founded and directs the Future Sustainability Research Group, which pursues frontier research focused on the development of intelligent solutions for sustainable, net zero, healthy, liveable and equitable cities of the future. She has published groundbreaking research in these areas. Please see her research website for more details: www.nyhanlab.org 

Dr. Nyhan previously worked at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston where she led the Urban Environmental Research Team within MIT’s Senseable City Laboratory. Subsequently, she was a Post-Doctoral researcher at Harvard University’s School of Public Health. Later, she was recruited to the United Nations in New York City where she led groundbreaking research on the application of emerging technologies in sustainable development and humanitarian efforts. Dr. Nyhan has a PhD from Trinity College Dublin and was a Fulbright Scholar at MIT.  

Marguerite’s work has been featured extensively in the media, including in the Guardian newspaper, NPR, the Irish Times and the Irish Independent. She has spoken to a range of audiences globally; from lecturing at MIT and Harvard, and giving two TEDx talks in her home country of Ireland to addressing the United Nations Environment Assembly in Kenya. 

Anna Ozolina – Project Manager Sustainable Futures Project

Anna Ozolina is the Project Manager for the Sustainable Futures Project. She is responsible for the overall delivery of the project and will be providing project coordination across all colleges and schools at UCC, the Higher Education Institutions, industry partners and other stakeholders for impactful, long term enterprise-informed sustainability skills education agenda.

Anna has research, teaching and project management experience in the field of responsible and sustainable business. Anna has extensive experience in large cross-sectoral multi-disciplinary EU and corporate grant coordination, knowledge of setting up and developing research centres and expertise in designing and delivering sustainability leadership courses. Further, Anna has experience in building and leveraging networks around sustainability-driven business practice in various countries across the globe.

Email: aozolina@ucc.ie

Tanya Fitzgerald - Enterprise Liaison Officer

Tanya is the Sustainable Futures Enterprise Liaison Officer. As part of the administration team, she is responsible for managing relationships with enterprise partners and for leading the project's skills mapping activities for enterprise led curriculum development. Please contact Tanya if your company would like to get involved in the Sustainable Futures Project.

E-mail: TFitzgerald@ucc.ie

Nollaig Power - Instructional Designer

Nollaig is the UCC instructional designer for the Sustainable Futures project. Enthusiastic about learner-centered teaching and technology enhanced learning in higher education, her aim is to support the delivery of pedagogically effective, acessible online learning. Her background is in delivering IT training and media content development. She now works with the academic and teaching staff on the Sustainable Futures project, assisting with designing, developing, implementing and supporting the online delivery of the project programmes. She also provides training to staff in the use of online teaching technologies and platforms. Aditionally, she is responsible for the project website development and maintenance.

E-mail: nollaigpower@ucc.ie

Siobhán is Senior Executive Assistant in the School of Engineering, primarily assigned to Civil, Structural & Environmental Engineering to support the suite of Sustainability in Enterprise academic programmes. She works to support both students and staff in the School of Engineering, guiding them regarding programmes (e.g. regulations, timetables, assessment) and offering advice in relation to University processes. She is an integral part of events management within the project.

Email: s.consenheim@ucc.ie

Dr. Paul Bolger is a Manager of the Environmental Research Institute at UCC. He has a PhD in Chemistry and a Masters in Business Administration and has worked across academia, industry and government for over 25 years developing long term research solutions for global sustainability challenges. He is currently principal investigator on a number of research projects on climate change and the circular economy including Imagining 2050 which is envisioning pathways for a zero carbon Ireland, and NEWTRIENTS which is exploring the valorisation of dairy industry wastewater.  Dr. Bolger is interested in how inter- and trans-disciplinary approaches can be used to create more impactful outcomes for environmental and sustainability research. He teaches a module on Leadership for Sustainability as part of the HDip for Sustainability in Enterprise for at UCC. He is a US-Ireland Fulbright Scholar and a member of the Royal Irish Academy Climate Change and Environmental Sciences Committee

As a Sustainable Futures Project Team member Dr. Bolger will use his position to leverage resources to ensure the successful delivery of the Sustainable Futures course offerings within the ERI. Paul will support fostering enterprise and industry partnerships and developing a blueprint for the enterprise skills mapping exercise.

Professor John Cullen – Project Co-Lead

Professor Cullen is responsible for the Maynooth University portion of the Sustainable Futures deliverables. He will contribute to the enterprise-informed curriculum development and skills mapping for the eastern region of Ireland and advise on programme and content development. He is also involved in standardizing the assessment of students nationally. He will participate in working groups to design modules in business, management, leadership and economics for environmental sustainability in enterprise to support the development of the new courses. He will also be involved in the accreditation, review and evaluation of course offerings.  He has research interests in the field of sustainable and responsible organisational and management learning and is happy to discuss new projects in this area as part of the Sustainable Futures project.

Louise is a Senior Lecturer / Associate Professor in Sustainable Futures at the School of Business, Maynooth University. Louise holds a PhD in Anthropology from Maynooth, which was awarded without corrections in March 2022. Her PhD examined the role of AI and robots in society, and the relationship between society, technology and nature. As part of her PhD, she was awarded a Wenner-Gren research scholarship (2019) for carrying out fieldwork in the US. She also holds an MSc in Multimedia Technology from UCC and an MA in English Literature from UCD.

Louise’s teaching experience includes undergraduate, postgraduate and executive education programs in social theory, design methods, organisational change, entrepreneurship, and innovation. She has held research positions focused on leadership, human-centred design and sociotechnical systems. Prior to moving to academia, she held management positions in digital media companies.

Louise’s current research is focused on responsible innovation, sustainable transformation, design for sustainability and ecological existentialism.

Corinna McCorristine - Executive Assistant

As Executive Assistant for the Maynooth University modules of the Sustainable Futures course, Corinna will be the administrative coordinator for the academic staff and students. In collaboration with the Executive Assistants from UCC and Sligo IT, she will contribute to the ongoing streamlining of curriculum information, course schedules and student experience across the three institutions.

As Co-Lead on the project, Professor Lucy will be responsible for the Atlantic Technological University portion of the project deliverables. As Head of Environmental Sciences, Professor Lucy will use her influence to promote the Sustainable Futures courses within her department and to support and encourage participation to the working groups to facilitate the development of new modules in environmental sciences to support the new courses. Professor Lucy will play a leading role in leveraging resources and directing the best practice development and delivery of online courses and modules. She will also be involved in the accreditation, review and evaluation of courses.

Declan Feeney, an environmental scientist, currently lecturers in Environmental Science and Sustainability in the Department of Environmental Science at the Institute of Technology Sligo, Ireland.  He specialises in environmental management, sustainability, and ecosystem services.   

He is a member of an international education group, ‘Sustainable Futures’, hosting a summer university on sustainability for undergraduate students, which is now in its 10th year.  He also convened and co-organised the bi-annual ‘Education with Sustainability’ educators conference at IT Sligo (2018) and Mid Sweden University, Sweden (2020).

Feeney works within the Centre for Environmental Research, Innovation and Sustainability (CERIS) at IT Sligo researching societal change in the face of environmental challenges associated with climate change.  This has included research into now-casting and future-casting environmental change in water quality associated with Blue Flag beach after short term pollution incidents. He is also active in the IT Sligo sustainable management initiative, Green Campus. 

Mr Steve Tonry Lecturers in Environmental Science in IT Sligo.

As a project Team Mr Tonry will play a significant role in enterprise-informed curriculum development and skills mapping for enterprises in the western and north-western region of Ireland (WP3); in programme and curriculum development (WP4); and in delivery (WP5). Steve will develop blended learning (In-class and online) content for environmental science modules as required to support courses. Steve will work directly with the Senior Lecturer  and the Instructional Designers at IT Sligo to achieve this.

Aine is the IT Sligo instructional designer for the Sustainable Futures project. Her role is to design and develop learning experiences and materials that have a founding in pedagogical theory and universal design for learning. Her role is also to provide training and support in the use of educational technology.

Fiona Britton is a lecturer in Sustainability and Regulatory Affairs in the Department of Environmental Science at Atlantic Technological University, Sligo. She specialises in sustainability, resource management and stakeholder engagement.    

Fiona has been engaged in sustainability management and education in ATU Sligo since 2019, coordinating the ATU Sligo Green Campus programme, the award of ATU Sligo’s first Green Flag and the development of the first Sustainability Strategy for the campus. She also co-organised the bi-annual ‘Education with Sustainability’ educators conference at ATU Sligo in 2022. 

Prior to joining ATU, Fiona worked as an environmental consultant in Ireland, UK and Australia working with enterprise to manage environmental compliance, resource management, stakeholder engagement and sustainability reporting.  

As part of the Sustainable Futures project team, Fiona is engaged in enterprise-informed curriculum development and skills mapping for enterprise in the northwest region of Ireland.