Owen works on the theory and observational consequences of protoplanetary disk evolution, photoevaporation and exoplanet demographics, explaining features such as the observed radius gap in close-in exoplanets.
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.
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.
Works on quantum-limited sensing for astroparticle physics. Directions: (1) Pierre Auger Observatory — UHE cosmic ray composition and spectrum via radio and fluorescence detection; (2) liquid argon dark matter detectors; (3) co-PI DARPA QuSeN (2025) — quantum sensing of neutrinos using phonon-coupled SC qubit sensors with Cleland and Chou. KICP member.
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.
Reichardt leads Melbourne's CMB effort and is a member of SPT-3G, the third-generation South Pole Telescope camera, whose focal plane is populated by ~16,000 transition-edge sensor bolometers read out by SQUID multiplexers. His science targets are CMB lensing, the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect and the small-scale temperature and polarisation power spectra; the enabling technology is cryogenic quantum-limited detection. 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 astronomical analogue of the same problem — a detector whose noise floor is set by fundamental quantum limits rather than by the source — and TES/SQUID readout is a natural pivot for a physicist trained on pT/sqrt(Hz) magnetometry, since SQUID amplification is the shared hardware. Preferred attribute present: astronomy where the quantum sensor is the enabling technology.
Rimmer's Planetary Astrochemistry Lab experimentally simulates planetary atmospheric, aqueous and surface chemistry to measure reaction rate constants relevant to prebiotic chemistry, using the custom-built StarLab UV photochemistry simulator to reproduce the light of young stars, in order to constrain which planets and moons are most likely to host the chemical pathways to life.
Samra develops telescopes and spectrometers flown on aircraft and balloons to observe the solar corona at EUV and infrared wavelengths, including solar magnetometry, optical design, and modeling — a borderline but included astronomy-instrumentation case given its magnetometric sensing goal, though the platform is a classical (non-quantum) spectropolarimeter.
NON-PREFERRED (astronomy pivot, kept for review). Seager's group works on exoplanet atmosphere and interior characterization and the search for atmospheric biosignature gases, including leadership of space-mission concepts (Starshade, ASTERIA, TESS deputy science direction) that require high-contrast, high-resolution spectroscopic instrumentation; per public reporting she is departing MIT for the University of Toronto/CITA effective September 1, 2026, so any postdoc search should confirm her host institution directly.
Studies quasars and supermassive black hole growth via reverberation mapping and large time-domain spectroscopic/photometric surveys.