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 University of North Carolina in 1984. She served as Chair of her department from 2004-2009, and during that period and in the years following led the transformation of its introductory physics courses to use research-based active learning methods; these methods are now also widely used in other courses in the department.

The American Physical Society named her department as a "Department of Distinction" for its support of effective practices in undergraduate education.

Distuinguished Professor McNeil is a materials physicist who uses optical spectroscopy to investigate the properties of semiconductors and insulators. She is a Deputy Editor at the Journal of Applied Physics, and a Fellow of the American Physical Society. She has worked throughout her career to enhance the representation and success of women in physics.

She is serving as a Sigma Xi Distinguished Lecturer, giving talks about organic semiconductors, women in science, and the physics of music to Sigma Xi chapters at colleges and universities across the country, including K-State this fall.