Professor Margaret Sheil AO was appointed Vice-Chancellor and President of QUT in February 2018, having previously been Provost at The University of Melbourne (2012-2017) and Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Research Council (2007-2012).

Professor Sheil has been an academic in chemistry and held a number of senior roles at the University of Wollongong, including as Dean of Science and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research). She is a Fellow of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute (RACI), the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering (ATSE) and was inaugural Fellow of the Australian and New Zealand Society for Mass Spectrometry (ANZSMS).

Professor Sheil is Chair of the Board of the Queensland Museum Network, a member of the Board of Universities Australia, a member of the Australian Space Agency Advisory Group, and a member of the Advisory Council of the CSIRO Science Industry Endowment Fund (SIEF). She was a Director of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) from 2015-2019, and the Advisory Board for Coursera. She was a member of the Prime Minister’s Science, Innovation and Engineering Council, the National Research Infrastructure Council and the Cooperative Research Centres Committee from 2007-2012.

In 2017 Professor Sheil was made an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for her distinguished service to science and higher education as an academic and administrator, through significant contributions to the national research landscape, and to performance standards. Professor Sheil holds a Bachelor of Science and a PhD in Physical Chemistry from The University of New South Wales and was presented with the Science and Technology Alumni Award from UNSW in 2016.