For the past twenty years, the nominee has been one of the genuine innovators of astronomical instrumentation. His work on stacked piezo-electric transducers led to the first general-user tunable filters and to advances in the use of robotic positioners on astronomical telescopes. Another of his innovations, the nod & shuffle technique, allows extremely precise sky subtraction and regularly delivers the deepest optical spectroscopic observations on a major telescope. In the last decade, the nominee pioneered and developed astrophotonics, a field that lies at the interface of astronomy and photonics. This field has produced remarkable new innovations including the photonic lantern that allows for single-mode action in a multi-mode fibre. Recent developments have been sky-suppressing fibres that reduce the brightness of the infrared sky, and an all-photonic picosatellite including such innovations as a fibre-based radiation counter. The most remarkable development to date is the patented PIMMS concept where the nominee has shown how all spectrographs can be diffraction-limited regardless of the input illumination (slit size, f/ratio, telescope) - no instrument needs to be bigger than a microwave oven which has profound implications for instruments on extremely large telescopes and satellites.
On leadership, the nominee runs two photonics laboratories and a large experimental group (30 people including honours students, PhDs, postdocs and research faculty) extending over three schools; he was Guest Editor for the Optics Express special issue on astrophotonics, and co-organizer for astrophotonics symposia, tutorials and sessions at recent OSA conferences; he is Associate Director of the Institute for Photonics and Optical Science; he co-founded two large astrophotonic consortia (Europe, Australia).
* The field of astrophotonics: Optics Express, 17, 1880 (2009); Physics Today, 65, 31 (2012)
* Photonic lantern: Optics Letters, 30, 2545 (2005); Optics Express, 17, 1988 (2009); Optics Express, 18, 4673 (2010); Optics Express, 18, 8430 (2010); Optics Express, 19, 5698 (2011); Optics Express 37, 452 (2012); Nanophotonics, 2, 429 (2013)
* Fan-out waveguide: Optics Letters, 37, 2331 (2012)
* Ultra broadband aperiodic fibre Bragg grating: J. Opt. Soc. Amer. A, 25, 153 (2008); Optics Express, 17, 1995 (2009)
* Ultra broadband photonic sky suppression: Optics Express, 12, 5902 (2004); Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc., 386, 47 (2008); Nature Communications, 2, 581 (2011); Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc., 425, 1682 (2012); Astron. J., 145, 51 (2013); Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc., 432, 3262 (2013)
* Photonic integrated multimode microspectrograph (PIMMS): Optics Express, 17, 18643 (2009); Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc., 404, 232 (2010); Astronomy & Astrophys. 544, L1 (2012); Optics Express, 20, 2062 (2012); Optics Express 21, 26103 (2014)
* Hexabundle: Optics Express, 19, 2649 (2011); Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc., 415, 2173 (2011); Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc., 421, 872 (2012); Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc., 438, 869 (2014)
* Mode switching in telecommunications: Optics Express, 20, 27123 (2012); Optics Express, 22, 1036 (2014); Optics Express, 22, 2216 (2014)
* Portable frequency comb: Optics Express, 20, 16671 (2012)
* Broadband correction for photon orbital angular momentum: Optics Express, in press (2014)
* Ultra broadband tunable filter: Astron. J., 98, 723 (1989); Publ. Astron. Soc. Aus., 15, 44 (1998); Publ. Astron. Soc. Pac., 110, 1059 (1998); Astrophys. J., 550, 593 (2001); Astrophys. J., 563, 611 (2001); Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc., 329, 759 (2002); Astron. J., 139, 145 (2010)
* Field widened / polarizing tunable filter: Publ. Astron. Soc. Pac., 108, 929 (1996); Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc., 299, 176 (1998); Publ. Astron. Soc. Pac., 112, 1112 (2000); Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc., 322, 201 (2001)
* S/P-maximized holographic grating (independently discovered by L. Dickson): Publ. Astron. Soc. Pac., 116, 403 (2004)
* Space laser communications: Science, 297, 523 (2002); Publ. Astron. Soc. Pac., 115, 720 (2003)
* Stacked photographic plates: Astron. J., 106, 1344 (1993); Astron. J., 106, 2154 (1993); Publ. Astron. Soc. Aus., 15, 33 (1998)
* Nod & shuffle sky suppression: Publ. Astron. Soc. Pac., 110, 912 (1998); Publ. Astron. Soc. Pac., 110, 1059 (1998); Astrophys. J, 553, L129 (2001); Publ. Astron. Soc. Pac., 113, 197 (2001)
* Nod & Shuffle Mode: AAT 3.9m, Gemini 8m, VLT 8m, Keck 10m, Grantecan 10.2m
* Hawaii Imaging Fabry-Perot Interferometer (HIFI), CFHT 3.6m, UH 2.2m, Hawaii
* Taurus Tunable Filter (TTF), AAT 3.9m, Australia
* Maryland Magellan Tunable Filter (MMTF), Magellan 6.5m, Chile
* Dark Ages Redshifted Ly-alpha Explorer (Dazle), VLT 8m, Chile
* Grantecan Tunable Filter Spectrograph (Osiris), Grantecan 10.2m, Canary Islands
* Gemini North OH Suppression Spectrographs (GNOSIS), AAT 3.9m, Australia
* Photonic OH Suppression Spectrographs (PRAXIS), AAT 3.9m, Australia
* Sydney-AAO Multi-Object Hexabundle Spectrograph (SAMI), AAT 3.9m, Australia
* Photonic Integrated Multimode Microspectrograph (PIMMS), AAT 3.9m, Australia
* High-Resolution Echelle Multi-Object Spectrograph (HERMES), AAT 3.9m, Australia
* Sydney Photonic Nanospectrograph Picosatellite (inSPIRE), Low Earth Polar Orbit
As Head of Instrument Science at the Anglo-Australian Observatory (2001-7), the nominee oversaw the development of key technologies for numerous multi-million dollar projects, including the FMOS infrared spectrograph on the Subaru 8m, the FLAMES spectrograph on the VLT 8m, the AAOmega spectrograph on the AAT 3.9m, the 6dF spectrograph on the UKST 1.3m, and several major international developments (e.g. WFMOS project).