Biographies

JT Janssen – Chief Scientist
JT joined NPL in 1998. Prior to this he was a research fellow at the University of Bristol and did his PhD and Masters at the University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands. JT became an NPL Fellow in Quantum Electrical Metrology in 2006 and was appointed a visiting professor at Lancaster University in 2018. Since 2017, he has been a member of the NPL Executive team, first as the Research Director, and recently as the Chief Scientist. As Chief Scientist, he is responsible for the external scientific engagements and for the quality and benchmarking of the research outputs of the laboratory and its knowledge management. JT is also the UK delegate for EURAMET the European Association of National Metrology Institutes and is the executive sponsor for NPL’s Juno committee, which aims to address gender equality in physics and to encourage better practice for all staff.

Professor Sarah Sharples - DfT Chief Scientific Adviser
Professor Sarah Sharples is Chief Scientific Adviser for the Department for Transport. She is a Professor of Human Factors in the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Nottingham and from 2018 to 2021 was Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion and People. She has led research in transport, manufacturing and healthcare, and currently leads the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Connected Everything Network Plus. She founded and is co-director of the EPSRC Horizon Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT), and has led research programmes examining implementation of new technologies in rail, highways and aviation. She was President of the Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors from 2015 to 2016.

Richard Barker – Head of Energy and Environment
Richard is the Head of Energy and Environment at NPL, where he leads the UK science and measurement capability to address the societal grand challenges of climate change and environmental sustainability. Educated as a physicist, Richard spent over 25 years at the leading edge of the technology and creative industries, spanning multiple roles from CTO to marketing strategy to managing director. In 2011, Richard joined Climate-KIC, a European Commission funded organisation tasked with addressing climate change and developing the green economy. As the Director of Innovation and Director Research and Thought Leadership, Richard’s understanding of the challenges and opportunities for progress was shaped by exposure to world-leading scientists, thought leaders, practitioners, C-suite executives and entrepreneurs.

Charlotte Massey – Strategy Manager for Net-Zero Ecosystems.
As Strategy Development Manager for Net-zero ecosystems, Charlotte works with key stakeholders of this complex landscape to deliver impact from metrology in support of net-zero emissions targets and climate action. After obtaining a Physics BSc from University of Southampton, she began her career in the Nuclear Energy Industry as a physicist and building on this technical foundation she developed as a project manager. Joining NPL in 2017 her initial focus was international instrumentation sales from which her role grew to cover NPL’s international business, including collaborations and commercial sales, with a focus on Energy and Environment.

Ying Zhang – Energy & Environment Strategy
Working in the Energy and Environment Strategy Directorate at NPL since 2019, Ying covers Air Quality in both urban and rural environments. She has recently developed strategies leveraging measurement science capabilities to address Energy and Environment challenges in a number of industry sectors. Ying connects science innovation with end user requirements to solve industry problems and support government policies. Ying has 20 years broad industrial and managerial experience in technical, commercial, strategy and business development roles in the oil and gas sector. She has a doctorate and a bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from Queen Mary University and Peking University respectively.

Emma Richardson – Research Lead, Energy & Environment
Emma is Research Lead for Energy and Environment at NPL, where she spearheads key stakeholder engagement and strategy projects in collaboration with scientists across the laboratory in areas such as climate and emissions measurement, future energy vectors and carbon capture, usage and storage. Emma has a degree in Geography and several years of experience working in the field of research and low-carbon innovation. In 2018, Emma was seconded to the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology to design a £50m programme that looked to fund clean energy innovation activity within the themes of industrial decarbonisation, cooling and energy storage.

Alice Drinkwater – PhD Student, Atmospheric Environmental Science
Alice is a fourth year PhD student at University of Edinburgh and NPL. Her research concerns modelling and measurement of methane amount fractions and stable isotope ratios. She’s been split between being based at Edinburgh (for the modelling side of things) and at NPL (for the measurement portion). For her undergraduate she did an integrated masters in Geophysics at University of Leeds, with a year at the University of Calgary in Canada. 

Measurement for our planet