User:Raggyanne/sandbox

Frances Saunders CB FREng FInstP is a British scientist and former civil servant. She was the chief executive of Dstl between August 2007 and March 2012.[1][2] Prior to this Saunders was a policy officer at the Office of Science and Technology and research scientist into liquid crystal devices at the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment. Saunders is the president of the Institute of Physics.[3]

Saunders attended the girls-only Portsmouth High School, before attending Nottingham University (1972-75)to study physics. She became Leyland's first female graduate engineer,in 1975 on an electronic engineering apprenticeship, eventually leaving due to frustration that the electronic systems she worked on were not used on mass-production scales. In 1978 joined the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment (RSE) and started the part time PhD in liquid crystal devices at Nottingham University which she attained in 1984.[4] In 1992 she joined the Defence Research Agency and took on various roles within the establishment before becoming director of the Centre for Defence Analysis at the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency in 1997 In 2000 she was made director,research council at the Office of Science and Technology. This was followed by her appointment to the Ministry of Defence's Science & Technology Laboratory; of which she became the chief executive in 2005. She retired from the Civil Service in 2012 but maintained an active interest in science by becoming president elect of the Institute of   Physics (2012) to become its president in 2013[5]