Pickering performs high-resolution Fourier-transform spectroscopy of atomic and ionic transitions in the laboratory to provide accurate wavelengths, oscillator strengths and transition probabilities that underpin the analysis of stellar and nebular astronomical spectra.

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.