Laurie McNeil is the Bernard Gray Distinguished Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  She earned an A.B. in Chemistry and Physics from Radcliffe College, Harvard University, and a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  After two years as an IBM Postdoctoral Fellow at MIT she joined the faculty at UNC-CH in 1984.  She has been there ever since, apart from sabbatical stays at Argonne National Laboratory, DuPont Central Research & Development, and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.  Prof. McNeil is a materials physicist who uses optical spectroscopy to investigate the properties of semiconductors and insulators, and she serves as a Deputy Editor at the Journal of Applied Physics.  While serving as Chair of her department she led an NSF-funded effort to transform its introductory physics classes to incorporate active learning and other findings from physics education research; this has led to increased use of these techniques in upper-division classes as well.  She is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, and her service to that organization comprises leadership roles in the Committee on the Status of Women in Physics (including on 15 site visits), the Southeastern Section, and the Forum on Education, as well as terms on the Council of Representatives and the Board of Directors.  Among her many awards are the 2019 George B. Pegram Award of the Southeastern Section of the American Physical Society “for excellence in the teaching of physics” and the 2025 John David Jackson Award for Excellence in Graduate Physics Education of the American Association of Physics Teachers.