Dr Phillippa M. Spencer

Dr Phillippa M. Spencer is the 2019 winner of the Woman of the Year Women in Defence and Outstanding Contribution to Defence Awards. The annual awards, this year held at Guildhall in London, recognise exceptional women across UK defence. With more than 470 nominations received, the competition was high.

Phillippa was cited for her work as a polymath, applying mathematical and statistical thinking across a number of areas such as cyber, artificial intelligence, data fusion, chemistry and biology; She has worked at Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) for 17 years.

Her analysis was used amongst healthcare workers in Sierra Leone during the Ebola outbreak and she was a key subject matter expert in bringing the F-35 fighter into service. More recently, Phillippa was involved in the clean-up of Salisbury following the Novichok incident, where she applied statistical modelling to determine whether locations or vehicles were safe to use.

This year Phillippa was awarded a patent for her method of interrogating mixtures of nuclear acids by short tandem repeat analysis. This complements her existing patents at Dstl including for the pre-symptomatic diagnosis of sepsis.

On receiving her award Phillippa said:
“This was a huge shock to me and a tremendous honour. I want to thank all the people who have supported me throughout the years, especially the F-35 team. Becoming Woman of the Year is a humbling, yet exciting experience.” I am lucky enough to have had a diverse and extremely fun career and I hope that I have many years to come. I would ask all of my colleagues to nominate more women next year as I know there are many others like me who have made significant contribution to defence.”