Tan leads the Superconducting Quantum Detectors group, holding ERC Starting and Consolidator Grants. Two main research pillars: (1) Quantum-limited SIS mixer development — pushing THz SIS heterodyne receivers above the Nb gap (~700 GHz) using NbTiN/NbN films for next-generation ALMA wideband sensitivity upgrade (Band 9) and large-format focal-plane mixer arrays for JCMT/SMA; (2) Superconducting parametric amplifiers (TWPAs) — fabricating kinetic-inductance and Josephson-junction TWPAs achieving near-quantum-limited broadband noise performance from microwave to THz, with applications to dark matter/axion searches (ABRACADABRA/prototype cavity haloscope), quantum computing qubit readout, and CMB-grade receivers. Group is transitioning TWPA fabrication in-house using Beecroft Building cleanroom. ERC Consolidator Grant awarded 2024.
Thatte leads Oxford's role in developing HARMONI, the first-light integral-field spectrograph for ESO's Extremely Large Telescope, alongside observational studies of black holes and galaxy structure enabled by advanced integral-field spectroscopy.
Develops instrumentation for cosmic microwave background telescopes and radiometers, including work related to CMB-S4 and 21-cm cosmology experiments.
Tinney is an exoplanet hunter who builds the spectrographs he uses. He leads Veloce, the high-resolution, ultra-stable echelle spectrograph on the Anglo-Australian Telescope, whose entire purpose is to measure stellar radial velocities at the ~1 m/s level — a fractional wavelength shift of order 10^-9 — which requires obsessive control of thermal, mechanical and illumination systematics plus laser-comb or etalon wavelength calibration. He also works on brown dwarfs and on disentangling stellar activity from planetary signals. Positioned against the established body of NV-ensemble quantum sensing work — DEER, nanoscale NMR and T1 relaxometry protocols operating at pT/sqrt(Hz) field sensitivity — precision radial velocity is a frequency-metrology problem dressed as astronomy: like a pT/sqrt(Hz) magnetometer, the instrument's raw sensitivity was solved years ago and all remaining progress is in systematics and calibration. Good pivot target for a metrology-trained candidate.
Trenti combines high-redshift galaxy and gamma-ray-burst science with hands-on space instrumentation: he leads SkyHopper, a 6U CubeSat carrying a cooled near-infrared telescope intended for rapid follow-up of transients and exoplanet transits, which is an unusually complete exercise in building a photon-starved instrument under severe SWaP constraints. The group also works on infrared detector characterisation and on-board autonomy. Positioned against the established body of NV-ensemble quantum sensing work — DEER, nanoscale NMR and T1 relaxometry protocols operating at pT/sqrt(Hz) field sensitivity — the relevance to a quantum-sensing candidate is the engineering discipline of getting a low-noise detector to work in a hostile, uncontrolled environment — the same problem that separates a laboratory pT/sqrt(Hz) NV magnetometer from a fieldable one. Borderline inclusion on the astronomy criterion; kept because instrumentation is a genuine focus rather than a by-product.
Tuthill is the world's leading practitioner of aperture-masking interferometry and its modern photonic successors. His group's instruments — GLINT (a photonic nuller that destructively interferes starlight on a chip), Dragonfly, and the kernel-phase analysis framework — exist to recover structure at and below the formal diffraction limit of the telescope, in the photon-starved, speckle-dominated regime where naive imaging fails. Science targets are the dusty pinwheel nebulae of Wolf-Rayet binaries, protoplanetary discs and direct detection of exoplanets. Positioned against the established body of NV-ensemble quantum sensing work — DEER, nanoscale NMR and T1 relaxometry protocols operating at pT/sqrt(Hz) field sensitivity — this is the astronomy entry in the search that most closely mirrors the intellectual structure of quantum sensing: the instrument's performance is set by a fundamental noise floor (photon and speckle noise, analogous to the shot-noise floor at pT/sqrt(Hz)), and the entire game is designing an estimator and a hardware front end that saturate it. Preferred attribute strongly present.
Astroparticle physicist working on IceCube and the HAWC gamma-ray observatory, developing detector instrumentation and analysis methods for very-high-energy astrophysics.
Observational cosmologist and instrumentalist studying dusty star-forming galaxies and cosmology using ALMA, Hubble, Chandra, JWST, and South Pole Telescope data, and developing millimeter/submillimeter receiver instrumentation.
Builds radio and mm-wave quantum-limited sensing instruments for high-energy astrophysics and cosmology. Directions: (1) PUEO — balloon-borne radio Cherenkov (Askaryan) detector for ultra-high-energy cosmogenic neutrinos; (2) RNO-G — ground-based radio neutrino array at Summit Station, Greenland; (3) UHE cosmic ray radio detection methodology; (4) CMB instrumentation (BICEP/Keck, SPT, CMB-S4). 2025 APS Fellow; 2022 Moore EPII award. Director KICP.
Experimental astroparticle physicist developing radio-based detection of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays. Directions: (1) HAWC — high-altitude water Cherenkov detector for gamma-ray and cosmic ray sensing; (2) IceTop surface array at IceCube for cosmic ray composition at the knee; (3) radio detection of cosmic-ray-induced air showers (Askaryan emission) as a technique for large-scale UHE cosmic ray sensing. Enrico Fermi Institute member.