Veena Sahajwalla is an Indian-Australian inventor who is Professor of Materials Science in the Faculty of Science at the University of New South Wales, Australia. She is the Director of the UNSW SM@RT Centre for Sustainable Materials Research and Technology and an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow.

Sahajwalla is known for her role as a councillor on the independent Australian Climate Council and as a judge on the ABC television show The New Inventors. Sahajwalla also served as a commissioner on the Australian Climate Commission. She featured in a 2008 episode of ABC's science show called Catalyst.

Sahajwalla was born in Mumbai, India. She studied for her master's degree in Vancouver, Canada before settling in Australia. While in Canada, she met and married her husband Rama Mahapatra.

Sahajwalla has been working as a professor at the University of New South Wales since 2008. She founded the Sustainable Materials Research and Technology (SMaRT) Lab at UNSW in 2008 which focused on recycling science and waste management.

Sahajwalla has been publishing scientific papers focusing on material engineering in journals since 1989. She has published over 380 peer-reviewed scientific papers with both the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur where she completed her education and the University of New South Wales where she works.

Sahajwalla has also published many conference abstracts for international engineering and environmental conferences. She also has written and co-written many book chapters on the science of recycling including Unmaking Waste in Production and Consumption: Towards the Circular Economy.

Sahajwalla is well renowned for her contributions to building a waste-free economy. One of her most impactful projects was finding a cleaner alternative to using coal in the steel production industry. The process she created is called polymer injection technology, also known as green steel.

Sahajwalla discovered that recycled truck tires were a sustainable alternative to using coal as it was an environmentally friendly process that could prevent over 2 million tires from being diverted to landfills each year while simultaneously creating a renewable energy source. Tires could be ground into pellets and be used instead of coal as they released fewer greenhouse gases. Traditional steel making accounts for about 7% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Even though tires cannot be used as an alternative to all the coal used during production, they could substitute a percentage of the total coal consumed in the industry. This solution effectively lowered carbon emissions and prevented waste from being diverted towards landfills. This also will continue to be favorable as the world is rapidly de-carbonizing.^{[citation needed]}