Milena Penkowa

Milena Penkowa (born 1973) is a Danish neuroscientist who was a professor at the Panum Institute at the University of Copenhagen from 2009–2010. In 2010 she was convicted of fraud and embezzlement of funds from The Danish Society of Neuroscience. In the same year, she was suspended by the University of Copenhagen and consequently resigned her professorship.

Academic career and scientific misconduct Penkowa graduated from Kalundborg Gymnasium in 1991 and went on to study at the University of Copenhagen. She became assistant professor at the University of Copenhagen in 2000 and associate professor in 2002. Her research at Panum Institute at the University of Copenhagen from 2009–2010 mainly concerned the protein metallothionein.

In 2010 Penkowa was accused of scientific misconduct, as her graduate students were unable to replicate her previous results. Doubts arose about whether Penkowa had in fact carried out the experiments that she had reported. Penkowa was suspended from her professorship and research articles that she had authored were retracted from several journals. During the investigation, accusations of having misspent part of a 5.6 million kroner research grant were also leveled against her, and the University of Copenhagen returned 2 million kroner to the donor. Fifty-eight Danish researchers signed a letter requesting an open review of Penkowa's research, citing suspicions about data fabrication going back to 2002. but resigned her professorship in December 2010. In September 2017, the University of Copenhagen stripped Penkowa of her doctoral degree, after determining she had covered up her scientific misconduct.