Neil holds a Personal Chair in Research Software Policy and Practice, at EPCC, University of Edinburgh. He is the PI and Founding Director of the Software Sustainability Institute, a national facility established in 2010 for research software users and developers, whose mission is to cultivate better, more sustainable, research software to enable world-class research. His work focuses on how software developed from and for research can be improved through the application of software engineering practices and development of communities, policies, training and incentives.
He advises organisations across the world on the use and development of software used in research, including its impact on research infrastructure, reproducibility, scholarly communication, and digital skills and career paths. He is currently a member of the REF2029 Research Diversity Advisory Panel, UKRI Advisory Group on Digital Research Infrastructure, Research Software Alliance Steering Committee, and the advisory boards for the Helmholtz Federated IT Services (HIFIS), Mathematical Research Data Initiative (MaRDI), National Federated Data Infrastructure for Computer Science (NFDSxCS), and pyOpenSci. He previously chaired the SPF UKRI/Met Office ExCALIBUR Steering Committee, EPSRC e-Infrastructure Strategic Advisory Team, and Software Carpentry Advisory Council.
He is the co-author of Best Practices for Scientific Computing, the FAIR Principles for Research Software and An Open Science Peer Reviewers Oath, co-organiser of the Software Engineering for Science workshop series, and founding Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Open Research Software. He is also a trustee of Cymera: Scotland’s Festival of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Writing, and has worked with arts festivals and charities across the UK.