Technique - (34) Automated data acquisition and fitting

Type: Computational

Description: Scripted instrument control, real-time data storage, and automated multi-parameter fitting pipelines.

Department(s)/lab(s): Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences | Garrido Cognitive Neuroscience and Computational Psychiatry Laboratory @ UMelb
Summary:

Garrido is a computational cognitive neuroscientist — predictive coding, Bayesian brain models, neuroimaging biomarkers for mental health — who was appointed a chief investigator of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Quantum Biotechnology specifically to work with the Melbourne and UQ physics groups on non-invasive quantum-sensor recording of human brain magnetic fields. She is the human-subject and source-reconstruction end of the QUBIC portable-brain-imager programme: her lab supplies the paradigms, the clinical cohorts and the inverse-problem modelling that a diamond- or OPM-based MEG system has to serve. 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 — she is not a sensor developer, but she is the reason the pT/sqrt(Hz)-class magnetometers being built at Melbourne have a human-trials pathway at all. Preferred attributes present in strength: bioelectromagnetism and human trials with novel quantum technologies. Included as a deliberate borderline case — a sensing postdoc would be the physics half of a collaboration with this lab, not a member of it.

Department(s)/lab(s): Physics – Institute of Physics (IPHYS) / CIBM | Laboratory for Functional and Metabolic Imaging (Gruetter Group, CIBM) @ EPFL
Summary:

Gruetter leads the Laboratory for Functional and Metabolic Imaging (LFMI) at EPFL and co-directs the CIBM (Centre for Biomedical Imaging). Research directions: (1) Ultra-high-field in vivo MR spectroscopy — developing 1H, 13C, 31P, 23Na MRS at 14.1T animal and 7T human systems to measure metabolite concentrations (glutamate, GABA, lactate) in brain with unprecedented sensitivity; (2) Quantum coherence effects in NMR — exploiting J-coupling evolution and JPRESS sequences for quantum-selective metabolite editing; (3) Hyperpolarization — DNP-enhanced metabolite sensing in vivo for tracking metabolic flux in real time; (4) Neuroimaging — quantitative BOLD fMRI calibration and cerebral blood flow mapping. The 14.1T magnet is among the world's most powerful for biological NMR spectroscopy.

Department(s)/lab(s): School of Physics | Gureyev Computational X-ray Imaging Group @ UMelb
Summary:

Gureyev is one of the originators of propagation-based X-ray phase-contrast imaging and the transport-of-intensity phase-retrieval methods that made it practical; his current work concerns the information-theoretic limits of imaging — how signal-to-noise, spatial resolution and radiation dose trade against one another — and the application of those limits to phase-contrast tomography, ptychography and electron microscopy, including biomedical imaging at clinically tolerable dose. 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 shared intellectual core is the noise-resolution-dose triangle: the same estimation-theory framework that sets the pT/sqrt(Hz) floor of an NV ensemble governs how many photons a phase-contrast image needs. Borderline inclusion (X-ray rather than quantum sensing), kept because the technique is explicitly about pushing resolution past conventional limits.

Department(s)/lab(s): Physics (Cavendish Astrophysics) | COAST / MROI Optical Interferometry Group (Haniff) @ Cambridge
Summary:

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.

Department(s)/lab(s): School of Physics | Melbourne Ion Implantation and Single Ion Group (Jamieson) @ UMelb
Summary:

Jamieson's group built the counted single-ion implantation capability that underpins every donor spin qubit made at UNSW and Melbourne: individual P, Sb or Bi ions are implanted into silicon through a nanoscale aperture while on-chip detector electrodes register the electron-hole pairs from each ion stop event, so the number and position of dopants is known rather than assumed. Recent directions extend this to high-atomic-number donors for nuclear-spin qudits, to colour-centre creation in diamond and silicon carbide by counted implantation, and to characterising the damage and charge environment those ions leave behind. The work is fabrication-forward but its scientific content is single-particle detection metrology. 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 — his contribution is upstream: the deterministic creation and validation of the very spin defects whose ensembles are later interrogated by DEER and nanoscale NMR at pT/sqrt(Hz).

Department(s)/lab(s): School of Physics | Quantum Theory Group @ USyd
Summary:

Mahmoodian is a quantum-optics theorist working on waveguide QED and photon-photon interactions: how strongly-coupled emitters in a one-dimensional photonic channel generate non-classical photon-number correlations, and how those correlated multi-photon states can be exploited. His most sensing-relevant result is the demonstration that photon-number-correlated states produced by a single emitter can be used for quantum-enhanced metrology and absorption spectroscopy, beating the shot-noise limit with a source that requires no squeezing. He also works on the fundamental limits of quantum-enhanced measurement. 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 — his work belongs to the 'fundamental light physics' arm of the search rather than the spin arm, and it addresses the question directly downstream of pT/sqrt(Hz) ensembles: given a shot-noise-limited readout, what does non-classical light buy you? Theory PI, but tightly coupled to photonics experiments.

Department(s)/lab(s): PME | Maurer Lab @ UChicago
Summary:

Develops quantum sensing platforms at the biology interface. Core NV-center work: (1) widefield NV magnetic imaging of action potentials in neurons and cardiac tissue; (2) NV-based single-molecule NMR at 14 T resolving molecular structure with single-molecule sensitivity; (3) charge-sensitive shallow NV nanoprobes monitoring real-time cellular electrophysiology; (4) biocompatible diamond surface functionalization enabling multiplexed DNA microarray biosensing; (5) fluorescent-protein spin qubits as biological alternatives to diamond NV (2025 paper, Physics World Top-10 Breakthrough). Runs full NV stack: hot implantation, widefield and confocal ODMR, T1/T2/Hahn echo/DEER/Rabi, automated fitting pipelines. 2026 Sloan Fellow. PhD Lukin/Harvard; postdoc Chu/Stanford. Argonne joint appointment.

Department(s)/lab(s): School of Physics | Sydney Astroparticle and Dark Matter Group @ USyd
Summary:

O'Hare is a dark-matter phenomenologist whose work sits unusually close to instrumentation: he is the principal theorist of the 'neutrino fog' that limits direct-detection experiments, of directional dark matter detection (using the daily modulation of the WIMP wind to distinguish signal from background), and of the axion and ultralight dark-matter searches that increasingly rely on quantum sensors — haloscopes, comagnetometers, NMR-based searches and atomic magnetometers. He writes the sensitivity projections that tell experimentalists which quantum sensor to build. 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 axion/ALP search programme he works on consumes spin-ensemble magnetometry directly: CASPEr-class experiments are, in effect, precision NMR magnetometers operating far below pT/sqrt(Hz), and his phenomenology sets the sensitivity targets they aim at. Theory PI with strong experimental engagement.

Department(s)/lab(s): Institute of Physics (ETAP) | AG Oberlack - Astroparticle Physics (XENON) @ JGU
Summary:

Oberlack leads Mainz's contribution to the XENON/XENONnT dual-phase liquid-xenon dark-matter programme at Gran Sasso, covering detector instrumentation, ultra-low-background material screening, light and charge readout, and the associated rare-event analysis; the same detectors also probe neutrinoless double beta decay and coherent neutrino scattering. Relative to the established NV-ensemble quantum-sensing playbook (DEER, nanoscale NMR, T1 relaxometry at pT/sqrt(Hz) ensemble sensitivity), this is an astro-particle pivot: the shared discipline is single-quantum detection at absurd background rejection, and the group is a natural landing spot for a quantum-sensing postdoc interested in low-background readout electronics or in the growing overlap between quantum sensors and dark-matter searches.

Department(s)/lab(s): Physics | Palmer Lab @ UChicago
Summary:

Uses information theory and statistical physics to study neural circuit sensing. Directions: (1) multi-electrode array recording from salamander and mouse retina to map how retinal ganglion cells encode and predict natural visual scenes; (2) information-theoretic quantification of predictive coding strategies in sensory neurons; (3) developing statistical models of population neural codes. Technique focus: high-density multi-electrode arrays as a sensing platform for neural population dynamics. Joint appointment Organismal Biology and Anatomy.