Ben Hughes is a principal research scientist at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), the United Kingdom’s national measurement institute. He worked in NPL’s dimensional metrology group more than 27 years ago on the development of instrumentation for high-accuracy, traceable instruments and measurement techniques for dimensional and coordinate measurement. Hughes currently leads NPL’s research activities in large-volume coordinate metrology. Hughes is chair of the European Portable Metrology Conference, author of more than 25 metrology papers, and holds several patents.