Professor Liz Bacon FRSE, CEng, CSci, CITP, FBCS, FIScT, PFHEA, NTF, MACM is Principal and Vice-Chancellor of Abertay University. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, a National Teaching Fellow, a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, a Trustee and Director of Bletchley Park Trust, and a Board member of V&A Dundee. She is a past President of BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT and EQANIE (European Quality Assurance Network for Informatics Education), and a past Chair of the BCS Academy of Computing, and the CPHC (Council of Professors and Heads of Computing) national committee and in 2015 was voted the 35th Most Influential Woman in UK IT.

Liz is a Professor of Computer Science, with a PhD in Artificial Intelligence. She has over a 130 refereed publications and over 140 invited talks / keynotes. She is an experienced journal and conference reviewer, editorial board member, and PhD supervisor, and has been involved in many research projects including several EU FP7 and H2020 projects as both Principal Investigator and Project Coordinator. Her main research focus is in technology-enhanced, and immersive, learning, which involves bringing together expertise from a range of technologies in disciplines such as software engineering, artificial intelligence, security and computer games, to develop novel applications in areas such as crisis management and eHealth. Liz has been involved in many professional activities during her career which include working with: the European Commission, Parliamentary IT Committee (PITCOM), the National HE STEM programme, EKKA (Estonian Quality Assurance Agency), SKVC (the Lithuania Centre for Quality Assessment in Higher Education), ASIIN (German Quality Assurance Agency), AKKORK (Russian accreditation agency) and the University of Cambridge as an ICT Thought Leader for their International Examinations. Liz is passionate about digital education and the impact of AI on society. She is keen to inspire more people to choose computing as a career, particularly women. During her BCS Presidential year she set up a senior women’s network in STEM, called STELLAR which works to encourage more women to enter STEM professions.