Professor Olaf Diegel is both an educator and a practitioner of engineering product development with an excellent track record of developing innovative solutions to engineering problems. In his role at AUT, he is professor of product development and is the director of the Creative Industries Research Institute, an interdisciplinary institute that crosses over between Engineering, Art & Design, Computers and Communications. He is also an associate dean for strategic development in the Faculty of Design and Creative Technologies. As an academic, he is an active researcher and is widely published in the areas of product development, project management, 3D printing, smart house technologies, mechatronics and predictive health systems.

In his consulting practice he develops a wide range of products for New Zealand and International companies. Over the past 10 years he has developed over 40 successfully commercialized new products including innovative new theatre lighting products, security and marine products and several home health monitoring products.

He has received numerous awards including the 2006 New Zealand Engineering Excellence Awards Engineering Innovator of the Year prize, the best study award at the 2008 12th European Forum on Rapid Prototyping in Paris, France, thus firmly putting New Zealand on the world 3D printing map. He also won the 2008 Bayer Innovation Awards in the Health and Science category and in 2009 won the NZ nomination for the World Summit Awards in the E-Health & Environment category because of his excellent work in the area of the rapid product development of innovative predictive health monitoring products.