Ashley builds instruments that must work unattended in the worst environment on Earth: the PLATO and related autonomous observatories on the Antarctic plateau (Dome A/C), where he characterised the site's exceptional infrared background, seeing and atmospheric stability, and built the power, thermal and control systems needed for a telescope to survive a polar winter with no human present. He also works on low-noise infrared detectors and on CubeSat instrumentation. 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 discipline here — making a low-noise detector work reliably outside a controlled laboratory, with a hard power and thermal budget — is the same one that separates a benchtop pT/sqrt(Hz) magnetometer from a deployable one, and it is a skill set the quantum sensing field is short of. Borderline inclusion under the astronomy criterion; kept because the sensor and its environment are the entire object of study.

McMahon develops data-intensive, multi-wavelength observational techniques for wide-field imaging surveys (including gravitationally lensed quasar discovery in Gaia data) and plays a leading role in the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) and MOONS spectrograph projects, as well as national AI research infrastructure for astronomy.

Warren uses large near-infrared sky surveys (e.g. UKIDSS/VISTA) to discover and characterise high-redshift quasars, cool brown dwarfs and other rare populations, and works on wide-field survey design and statistics.