Frances Saunders (scientist)

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. 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.

Saunders attended the girls-only Portsmouth High School, before attending Nottingham University to study physics. She became Leyland's first female graduate engineer, on an electronic engineering apprenticeship, eventually leaving due to frustration that the electronic systems she worked on were not used on mass-production scales. This was when she joined the RSRE and started a part time PhD in liquid crystal devices.