DePoy heads the Munnerlyn Astronomical Instrumentation Lab, building high-throughput spectrographs and precision photometric-calibration systems (DECam/DECal for the Dark Energy Survey, VIRUS for HETDEX, GMACS for the Giant Magellan Telescope). A strong astronomy pivot where detector/spectrograph sensitivity is the enabling technology.
Haniff co-leads the COAST and MROI optical interferometry program at the Cavendish. His work focuses on aperture synthesis imaging, fringe tracking, detector technology (EMCCDs, L3CCDs), and instrument design for the MROI. He also holds the EPSRC grating-machining grant for ELT spectrograph components. MROI achieved first light in 2025/2026.
Lagrange is a leading figure in direct-imaging exoplanet science, using the VLT/SPHERE extreme-adaptive-optics coronagraph (which she helped design and exploit) to detect and characterize young giant planets around nearby stars, most notably the beta Pictoris planetary system, and to study debris-disk and planet-formation signatures such as non-common-path aberration correction algorithms for next-generation direct-imaging instruments.
Leon-Saval co-invented the photonic lantern and is the fibre-device engineer of the SAIL programme. His group designs, draws and characterises multicore fibres, mode-selective lanterns, OH-suppression fibre Bragg gratings and hexabundles, and increasingly applies the same devices outside astronomy — in telecommunications space-division multiplexing and in medical endoscopy and imaging through fibre. The unifying technical problem is coupling a spatially-incoherent, aberrated beam into single-mode circuitry without losing photons. 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 — photonic lanterns are directly applicable to quantum sensing readout: the same device that feeds a seeing-limited telescope beam into a single-mode spectrograph can feed fluorescence from a scattering biological sample into a single-mode quantum-limited detector, preserving the photon budget that a pT/sqrt(Hz) NV measurement depends on.
Marshall builds astronomical spectrographs and calibration systems in the Munnerlyn Lab; co-PI of GMACS (Giant Magellan Telescope) and project scientist for the Maunakea Spectroscopic Explorer, leading instrumentation for DES and HETDEX. Astronomy pivot driven by high-precision spectral/photometric instrumentation.
Parry designs and builds multi-object and integral-field near-infrared spectrographs for ground-based telescopes (CIRPASS, SMIRFS, MOONS) and is currently developing concepts for unfolding space telescopes and instruments to search for exoplanet biosignatures.
Queloz (2019 Nobel Prize, co-discoverer of 51 Peg b) leads exoplanet research at Cambridge, including precision radial velocity spectrograph development and transit photometry. He chairs the CHEOPS space mission science team and is founding director of the Leverhulme Centre for Life in the Universe at Cambridge. Research focuses on characterizing transiting terrestrial planets (especially around M dwarfs including TRAPPIST-1) and atmospheric biosignature detection with JWST-era instruments. Part-time appointment at University of Geneva.
NON-PREFERRED (astronomy pivot, kept for review). Simcoe designs and builds custom cryogenic infrared spectrographs (FIRE, and the new fiber-fed LLAMAS integral-field spectrograph) for the Magellan telescopes to study the chemistry of galaxies and quasars in the first billion years after the Big Bang; this is an instrumentation-driven astro program rather than a quantum-sensor program per se, so it is included as a borderline pivot.
The Stern Group explores fundamental quantum interactions of photons with 2D materials, nano-scale structures, and atoms. Key thrusts: (1) Valley-selective exciton-polaritons in monolayer transition-metal dichalcogenides (MoS₂, MoSe₂, WSe₂) embedded in optical microcavities — hybrid light-matter quasiparticles with valley-selective polarization and cavity-modified dynamics; (2) 2D semiconductor quantum emitters — quantum-dot-like single-photon emitters formed by confinement in TMD nanoribbons and by chemical functionalization/strain engineering of defects; (3) Astrophotonics: collaboration with Argonne National Laboratory and the Australian Astronomical Observatory to design and fabricate silicon ring-resonator photonic circuits for OH sky-background suppression in near-IR astronomical spectrographs; (4) Quantum non-reciprocal photonics in axisymmetric microresonators. Experimental tools: time-resolved spectroscopy, single-photon counting, nanofabrication. DOE Early Career Award; ONR Young Investigator Award; Sloan Research Fellow 2013. Affiliated with Fermilab-Northwestern CAPST.
Stubbs was the inaugural project scientist for the Vera C. Rubin Observatory/LSST and works on precision photometric calibration (e.g. tunable collimated beam projectors) for its 3200-megapixel wide-field survey camera, alongside dark-matter/dark-energy searches and tests of gravitation. Included as a borderline, not-preferred astronomy-instrumentation case: the camera/calibration technology is complex and cutting-edge but is CCD-based rather than a quantum sensor per se.