James Owen serves as the Associate Laboratory Director, Weapons Engineering for Los Alamos National Laboratory.

James has worked in LANL’s Nuclear Weapons Program for more than 25 years and is a recognized leader across the Nuclear Security Enterprise (NSE).

He has demonstrated technical and program leadership abilities in successfully executing some of NNSA and DoD’s most significant and challenging nuclear weapon programs, including the B61 Alt 357, W80 LEP, W76-1/Mk4A LEP, B61-12 LEP, W88 Alt 370 and W88 Alt 940.

In his current role as Associate Director for Weapons Engineering and Experiments, James manages the operations and infrastructure of High Explosives (HE) science and engineering research/development across 21 square miles, which are critical to LANL’s execution of nuclear weapons mission.

A native of northern New Mexico, James began working at LANL as a high school summer student and participated in the Graduate Research Assistant program before becoming a full-time staff member.

James earned a M.S. in Engineering from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from New Mexico State University.