About

I have a Personal Chair in Computing Education in the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh.

My primary focus is on Computing and STEM education. I'm particularly interested in access to education and how certain groups - especially women and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds - can be excluded and marginalised in STEM and CS.

I do research in this area and I also do a lot around national policy, for example through the BCS Scottish Computing Education Committee, which I currently chair, the RSE's Learned Society Group, on which I represent the BCS, and the BCS Academy. I'm the Director of Students for Infomatics and am passionate about creating environments that support young people from disparate backgrounds to effectively engage with computing. And of course my interests and research inform my teaching philosophy and my approach to the courses that I run and the students that I supervise.

I've also spent a lot of my career working in data integration and matching and in Semantic Web technology. I'm interested in how heterogenous data from multiple sources can be dynamically discovered, integrated and interpreted, especially in Crisis Management situations. I'm also interested in multi-lingual and multi-domain matching and in developing lexical resources, and have been doing work around Gaelic WordNets.

I'm always interested in taking on engaged students in any of these areas, and can sometimes find funding. I also love collaborative research and working with a wide variety of people. Get in touch if you're interested!

Fiona McNeill FRSE FBCS PFHEA