Dr Sinéad Mitchell
Lecturer in Sustainability and Strategy
J.E. Cairnes School of Business and Economics, University of Galway
Sinéad teaches a wide range of subjects at undergraduate and post graduate level. She draws on her rich background of working with industry as an engineer, business consultant and researcher in sustainable engineering. She has extensive experience of healthcare manufacturing and social enterprise development. The value of sustainability links a lot of her work and her teaching is informed by her research. She believes that the problems are of the world are not solved from just one perspective. She actively pursues inter disciplinary and cross- disciplinary activities.
"I bring the real world into the classroom with my rich industry experiences" "one of the core threads that I have brought into the classroom is sustainability and the SDGs is one way to do this"
Sinéad's work contributes to these SDGs
Sinéad has participated in a number of funded projects including on EPA Green Business Programmes, Pobal, Enterprise Ireland Disruptive Technology and European projects, working with many different educational institutions and companies across Europe. Her principal research interests include sustainability and eco-innovation, circular economy, sustainable assistive technologies, corporate social responsibility, sustainable procurement, waste management, life cycle assessment, product service systems.
Key: Target 12.2: Sustainable management and use of natural resources
Sinéad's current sustainability projects include: Sustainable Manufacturing, Transition to a Circular Economy in our Region; the Sustainability of Bioplastics; MiDrone; EPA Green Business - Circular Bikes with an optics company that are making optics for SpaceX or x space exploration and life cycle assessments on drones, examining all stages of the life cycle. She also works with the Ryan Institute and is part of the Advanced Sustainable Manufacturing Materials Engineering Research Group
Teaching
Sinéad's teaching and learning philosophy is to inspire students to change the world for the better, to see the world from a global worldview, and to engage with a systems engineering approach. She believes that learners can use their skills, knowledge and aspirations to create a better future and address global challenges. She believes engineering education must present the critical roles that engineers play when making decisions about how the world is constructed including: design, manufacturing, material choices, value chains, procurement practices and how all these aspects can be done better as a global citizen.
Lifecycle assessment is a module that will be offered as microcredit it is suitable across many disciplines. It is delivered with the School of Engineering, it provides the tools to measure sustainability and helps people to understand what impact a service, product or organization has.
Focusing on Targets: 12.2 - Sustainable management and use of natural resources; Target: 12.4 - Responsible management of chemicals and waste; Target: 12.5 - Substantially reduce waste generation; Target: 12.6 - Encourage companies to adopt sustainable practices and sustainability reporting
Sustainable Innovation
Many problems that face us today can't be solved by doing things in isolation. Systems thinking helps students to build mental models working teams, create shared visions and think about on anticipated consequences, as well as helping to develop personal mastery in any subject.
In the final year capstone projects Sinéad sets challenges for students to redesign everyday items, with a particular focus on healthcare products. Students really engage with the process of redesign, and are exposed to the simple choices that can make a difference, as well as the complexity of measuring the environmental impacts of products and services.
Focusing on Targets: 11.B - Implement policies for inclusion, resource efficiency and disaster risk reduction; Target: 12.1 - Implement the 10-year Sustainable Consumption and Production Framework; Target: 12.2 - Sustainable management and use of natural resources
Sinéad aims to instill the principles of universal design for learning and being part of the open scholarly community. She works with respect with all students to contribute through empathy, compassion and understanding of our campus community.
Engagement
Many of the SDGs are interrelated and it is important to think of the bigger system. Sinéad brings guest speakers in who can tell a good story about themselves and their experiences, which helps students in the class relate to the material covered.
Sinéad also runs a Circular Economy workshop with students and challenges them to create something from waste material into a product that can be sold in the shop. Students work on different concepts and designs and draw them up and the social enterprise manager comes back into the class and picks the best one.
One of Sinéad's student's looked at developing a remanufacturing process for the bike shop. Remanufacturing is different to recycling, remanufacturing is the creation of a product that is new that looks new out of the box.
Direct impact SDG Targets
Target 4.7 - Education for sustainable development and global citizenship
Target: 8.1 - Sustainable economic growth
Target: 8.2 - Diversify, innovate and upgrade for economic productivity
Target: 9.2 - Promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization
Target 11.B - Implement policies for inclusion, resource efficiency and disaster risk reduction
Target: 12.1 - Implement the 10-year Sustainable Consumption and Production Framework
Target: 12.2 - Sustainable management and use of natural resources
Target: 12.4 - Responsible management of chemicals and waste
Target: 12.5 - Substantially reduce waste generation
Target: 12.6 - Encourage companies to adopt sustainable practices and sustainability reporting
Target: 13.B - Promote mechanisms to raise capacity for planning and management
Target 17.6 - Knowledge sharing and cooperation for access to science, technology and innovation
Target: 17.17 - Encourage effective partnerships
Target: 17.19 - Further develop measurements of progress
In a major assignment that focuses on project planning, Sinéad's students’ collaborate with a local social enterprise An Meitheal Rothar to develop a project plan with them and discuss it with them to try and meet their requirements as described by the social enterprise management.
Research
Featured Publications
Understanding of responsible consumption and production is becoming increasingly important due to new reporting requirements. An important element of Sinéad's research has been the development of a framework to engage with manufacturing SMEs on sustainability and eco innovation. Much of her research examines the impacts of products or services and ways to improve these.
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Mitchell, S., Steinbach, J., Flanagan, T. and 5 more (...) (2022).EVALUATING THE SUSTAINABILITY OF LIGHTWEIGHT DRONES FOR DELIVERY: TOWARDS A SUITABLE METHODOLOGY FOR ASSESSMENT. ECCM 2022 - Proceedings of the 20th European Conference on Composite Materials: Composites Meet Sustainability,6355-362 |
SDG 9| SDG 12 |
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Sam-Daliri, O., Ghabezi, P., Flanagan, T. and 3 more (...) (2022).Recovery of Particle Reinforced Composite 3D Printing Filament from Recycled Industrial Polypropylene and Glass Fibre Waste. Proceedings of the World Congress on Mechanical, Chemical, and Material Engineering, |
SDG 7| SDG 9| SDG 12 |
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Mitchell, S., O’Dowd, P. and Dimache, A., 2011. The issue of waste in European manufacturing SMEs. In In the proceedings of the 13th international waste management and landfill symposium, S. Margherita di Pula (Cagliari). |
SDG 12.4; 12.5; SDG 9.3; SDG 15.0 |
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Gaberščik, C., Mitchell, S. and Fayne, A., 2020, September. Saving lives and saving the planet: the readiness of Ireland’s healthcare manufacturing sector for the circular economy. In Sustainable Design and Manufacturing 2020: Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Sustainable Design and Manufacturing (KES-SDM 2020) (pp. 205-214). Singapore: Springer Singapore. |
SDG 12.2; 12.4, SDG 13.0; 13.1, SDG 9.5, SDG 17.6, SDG 8.4 |