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.
Barry works on the detection of the 21-cm signal from the Epoch of Reionisation with the Murchison Widefield Array and, prospectively, SKA-Low. Her specialty is calibration systematics: she has shown how small errors in the sky and beam model propagate into spectral structure that mimics or swamps the cosmological signal, and has developed the diagnostic and mitigation framework that current MWA upper limits rest on. This is a measurement whose entire difficulty is instrumental. 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 intellectual structure is identical to a hard magnetometry measurement: raw sensitivity is adequate, and everything depends on understanding correlated, instrument-induced systematics well enough to subtract them below the signal. Early-career PI (DECRA). Borderline astronomy inclusion, kept on the systematics/instrument criterion.
Develops cryogenic detector technology for CMB experiments. Directions: (1) TES bolometer array design and fabrication for SPT-3G and CMB-S4; (2) MKID detector development as alternative to TES for next-generation CMB focal planes; (3) low-noise SQUID multiplexed readout for large-format arrays; (4) SPT-3G science: CMB lensing, cluster SZ, B-mode polarization. Argonne joint appointment.
Experimental cosmologist building and operating CMB telescopes. Directions: (1) South Pole Telescope — PI of SPT series; SPT-3G currently mapping CMB temperature and polarization at arcminute resolution; (2) thermal and kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect mapping for galaxy cluster cosmology; (3) CMB gravitational lensing for large-scale structure; (4) CMB-S4 design and planning. Argonne joint appointment. APS and AAAS Fellow.
Cassidy (formerly Microsoft/Sydney) builds hybrid superconductor-semiconductor quantum devices and the microwave measurement chains needed to read them out: dispersive gate sensing, superconducting resonators coupled to semiconductor nanostructures, and quantum-limited parametric amplification. The programme sits at the boundary between quantum computing hardware and quantum sensing — many of the same circuits used to read a qubit are, viewed differently, near-quantum-limited detectors of microwave photons or of charge. 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 — a superconducting-resonator readout chain with a quantum-limited amplifier is the leading route to inductively-detected spin resonance at sensitivities well below the pT/sqrt(Hz) regime accessible to optical NV ensembles, and Cassidy's group has the full stack of skills required. Mid-career, actively building; good autonomy for a postdoc.
Develops superconducting detector and readout systems for CMB observations. Directions: (1) SQUID-multiplexed readout architecture for large TES bolometer arrays (SPT-3G, CMB-S4); (2) transition-edge sensor bolometer fabrication and characterization; (3) MKID detector development; (4) CMB-S4 instrument design. Argonne joint appointment. Deep expertise in quantum-limited cryogenic detector readout.
Develops quantum metrology for ultra-weakly-coupled dark sectors and fundamental physics. Directions: (1) axion dark matter detection using entangled probe state preparation and superconducting qubit QND readout (HAYSTAC, ADMX); (2) dark radiation/energy detection with Cooper-pair box quasiparticle sensors; (3) GW detectors based on high-B-field microwave cavities probing early-universe phase transitions; (4) emergent gauge symmetries in quantum spin liquids. Co-PI DARPA QuSeN (quantum sensing of neutrinos, 2025). Devices/Sensors lead, DOE Quantum Science Center.
Specializes in quantum information and hybrid quantum systems. Directions: (1) superconducting qubit quantum computing and error correction; (2) hybrid quantum systems coupling superconducting qubits to mechanical resonators, spin systems, and optical photons; (3) quantum-limited microwave amplification; (4) co-PI DARPA QuSeN — quantum sensing of neutrinos via phonon-coupled SC qubit sensors (2025). Director Pritzker Nanofabrication Facility (PNF). AAAS and APS Fellow.
Theorist developing frameworks for quantum sensing, control, and amplification in driven-dissipative quantum systems. Directions: (1) quantum noise theory for optomechanical and electromechanical sensors — fundamental limits and backaction evasion; (2) parametric amplification and squeezing beyond standard quantum limit; (3) non-reciprocal quantum systems for quantum-limited amplifiers; (4) quantum sensing theory for GW detectors and CMB experiments. 2020 Simons Investigator in Theoretical Physics.
Experimental astroparticle physicist developing novel quantum-limited detectors for dark matter and neutrino sensing. Directions: (1) COHERENT experiment — first measurement of coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering (CEvNS) and ongoing precision measurements; (2) bubble chamber and scintillating bolometer detectors for WIMP dark matter; (3) development of low-threshold detectors sensitive to sub-GeV dark matter; (4) nuclear recoil sensing at the few-eV threshold. Enrico Fermi Institute member.