Dr Michael O'Sullivan is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Engineering Science at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He received his BSc (Hons) in Pure Mathematics and Computer Science and MPhil (Distinction) in Operations Research at the University of Auckland. He received an MS in Engineering-Economic Systems and Operations Research and PhD in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University, California, USA.

Dr O'Sullivan started working on automatic storage area network (SAN) design in 1997. He developed a heuristic for SAN design for Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Palo Alto, California, USA (HP Labs). He also developed an application to generate test problems for the SAN design
software at HP Labs. Both of these software projects have been patented in the USA.

Upon returning to the University of Auckland he founded the Network Design and Simulation Group (NDSG). NDSG has been working on using advanced Operations Research methods to automate the design, evaluation and implementation of networks with the current focus on SANs. This work includes collaborations with UC Santa Cruz on massive network design and the Kiwi Advanced Research and Education Network (KAREN) on simulation-driven management of an existing network. He has published work on automatic network design in Telecommunications Systems, Journal of Computing and Computers and Operations Research.