Dr Penny Owen (she/her/hers) leads NPL’s environmental impact, social impact and governance activities, having joined NPL in 2017.
In this role she is responsible for ensuring NPL operates as an exemplary national laboratory, able to deliver extraordinary impact. This includes providing excellent customer service, particularly for the delivery of measurement services to support UK industry and trade; leadership of quality & regulatory assurance, legal and governance matters; health, safety, environment and security and Marketing & Communications. Her philosophy is that we need to enable our world-leading science and engineering capability to be the best for the world.
After completing her PhD in Biochemistry at Birmingham University, Penny joined Amersham International as a research scientist. She held a variety of technical roles focused on the development of technologies supporting pharmaceutical discovery and development, in collaboration with major pharmaceutical industry customers.
She took the opportunity to move to a business role and subsequently held a range of marketing and business roles, covering products from molecular biology reagents and radiochemicals to sensitive detection instruments for cellular imaging.
Following the acquisition of Amersham by GE in 2005, Penny held a range of senior business leadership roles, including leading a global research consumable products business unit and developing a sales & operations planning team for a global network of production sites and warehouses serving the life science industry.
From 2011-2017, she was an external advisor for Welsh Government on their life sciences strategy and was instrumental in the planning, development and launch of Life Sciences Hub Wales, serving as non-executive director and Interim Executive Chair.
Penny holds a PhD in Immunology (University of Birmingham), a Postgraduate Diploma in Marketing (Chartered Institute of Marketing) and an MBA in Life Sciences (Open University).