Fiona McNeill

Fiona McNeill is a Reader in Computer Science Education at the School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh. She is co-chair of the British Computer Society's Scottish Computing Education Committee and represents the BCS in the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s Learned Societies’ Group.

McNeill researches computer science and STEM education, particularly in inequalities affecting access to education. She has also contributed to research on data integration and matching and in Semantic Web technology.

Career
McNeill gained her PhD in artificial intelligence from the University of Edinburgh in 2006, focussing on dynamic data integration and ontology matching. She was a research fellow at Edinburgh from 2005 until 2013.

After working as Assistant Professor, and then Associate Professor in Computer Sciences at Heriot Watt University, she took up the position as Reader of Computing Education at the University of Edinburgh in 2020.

Honours and awards
In 2018, McNeill was elected as a Fellow of the British Computer Society. In 2023, she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. She is a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

In 2021, McNeill was awarded the University of Edinburgh's Principal's Medal for her development of the Informatics Connect programme, helping students adapt to hybrid education.